Onto Unto

“To all the things we didn’t do before we died. Now we can do them.” — Vic Moretti from Longmire.

I walked down the path that splits the deep foliage of a jungle that yearns to overtake the houses that have fallen into disrepair between town and the western coast.

I thought about how maybe for all the difficult moments. The dark winter and wheezy spring— I was in the only place I could have been.

There’s nowhere but here in this moment.

It had been difficult to feel gratitude with my mind distracted— but as I wandered above the town between the path to the park and my apartment— I stayed in the moment as I jotted down little observations about the world around me.

The greenhouse garden scent of the jungle in the summer. The verdant leaves and scattered, rotten wood from the moisture and winds. The distant boats troweling— and the ferry that headed off to Iki island at a snails pace.

I’m twenty-nine years old— and each quiet lesson seems to be teaching me that giving up certainty makes the world a brighter, kinder, more curious place.

There is a pretense of “knowing” that we all carry. Everyday life makes it convenient— otherwise we’d be overwhelmed by the novelty found in every moment. But— in the slow moments. The ones of solitude— it’s okay to unshackle the heart from righteous chains. It’s okay to see the world as it is— a mystery.

Post

Escaped the apartment post-typhoon to brave the shattered glass break between the windstorms to head into town for groceries.

The air is so humid it feels like when you take an accidental breath underwater. Plugged nose and wash of water.

Broken wood, leaves, drowned cicadas, the canal rushing with water streaming down from the mountains. It’s a lush landscape with a magicians spread of green that hide and appear with no conscious pattern.

Chalky

“That’s a legend you’ve got outlined there,” a raspy voice said. The patrolman looked up to see an older man in a grey rumpled suit, “You ever heard about Constance Smith?” The patrolman shook his head.

“Some people in this town say she’s the mother of this man. Or at least, who this man was,” the man lit a rolled cigarette, “but the thing is that boy turned snake turned city-legend wasn’t half the enforcer she was.” The patrolman caught a glance at the silver at the man’s hip and the scarred knuckles that brushed it.

The older man gave a nod before leaving the young man to his outline and all the questions he’d never have answered.

Winds Inbound

Bite so deep you vibrate my bones when you try to speak.

There’s a storm wall inbound. I’m swimming through the air to get home— dodging little green mantis men & the fallen black and purple dappled butterflies with their hind wings stuck out like curved plane tails.

The pressure is charging— the island alive with static. The flicks of charge seen in scrambled errands and a fleet of taxis. Last minute ferries and plane flights. Arrival or departure— the storm consumes us all.

Idle water jugs and dry stock cans— a clean kitchen floor for a last minute refuge.

No AC for fear of the wind wrenching the blades in the wrong direction.

Boiling before sun break amidst empty howls.

Turn the cold valve on the faucet to receive water warm enough to bathe in.

I haven’t used the hot water in three months— it burns in this weather.

Nothing less than living— a good storm reminds us.

Imminent Arrival

I’m sitting on the stained, black mesh step stool in my kitchen. My fingers pruned from sweat type this out. My apartment smells of cleaning product, ripe grass, grape shochu, and age.

I’m twenty-nine years old and I’m not the man I thought I would be.

I look in the mirror at a sweat drenched shirt— I open to reveal the mass of droplets and scars and stains of a life that has been lived in alternating sprints and jogs.

I go into the doctor on Wednesday for a full physical.

I only have two real questions for them— is my heart okay? And how bad is the damage in my left knee?

You think of the aches and pains you carry around— knowing you can bear it until you can’t.

They aren’t always physical.

But this one is. The knee i joyously bounced upon hardwood racquetball courts with Henry during my final years of college as we played a never ending game of 1v1 soccer.

It came at a price— one that driving a stubborn manual car didn’t help.

I expect to hear there’s a tear in a ligament on Wednesday.

But I’m not sure there’s much to do.

On the other hand,

My heart?

The boy turned man— from a line of men that have almost uniformly died from heart attacks?

He knows bad news caught early is better than painful commiserations after the fact.

The doctors have always said I have a strong heart. I wonder if it comes part and parcel with the big rib cage.

The potential to be a stouter man then the thin wisp I’ve been for years.

I sit in this deep water heat. This pre-arrival preparation— for the typhoon that draws near.

I think of the timeless display of fireworks in the sky last night.

Celestial sparkles mixing with early night winds and the distant flash of emergency lights.

I think how this has become normal— in a span of time that still fees it can stretch back with one hand to grab the moments of my arrival.

My sister told me I won’t know how I’ve changed until I return to my old world.

And change I have.

I sit here on this stool— waiting to finish my thoughts before I clean this apartment.

Likely to listen to a short history podcast or learn some more Italian.

I sit and think about how I didn’t have a through-line from one dream to the next.

How easy it can be to feel outside of the world’s movement.

But I look at these pruned hands— before they return to form.

I look at the blurry outlines of the shapes in this hallway kitchen— and I think of the man I’ve become and how he couldn’t be farther from who I thought I’d be— while still being the same.

I think of that phosphorescent spark in the dead of night. The moment between beats of the heart.

The quiver between question and answer.

And I think of what it is to live.

What it is I remember the whispers of every lesson I’ve ever learned and forgotten return to me.

All I have to give— is everything.

Prophetic Nights

Nobody paid much attention to the man preaching on the corner until he started bleeding from his eyes.

That’s the problem with prophets— they never do it the easy way.

Malachi Graham had been a large man in life. Death did not diminish that. Instead, it seemed to amplify his proportions. Leading to whispered rumors about his “true” origins.

At the heart of each legend bears a kernel of truth.

The focus of heat from the magnified stare of the masses is enough to make the kernel pop— turning a closed truth into something off-kilter and oddly angled.

The apocalypse didn’t start overnight. Nor did it seem to be ever-lasting.

But in some wine-dark shadow of the night, a low heat pulsing through the city, the path back to the lives the citizens knew were lost.

Birthday Bops

Sitting on my tatami mat and drinking shochu— it would be easy to imagine that a year into my experience in Japan I had everything down pat. And to be frank, the daily routine is more or less set with the walks to work in the boiling summer heat and the afternoon malaise where I write provocative sentences that have yet to weasel their way into any substantial stories.

Sitting there— I got an email saying someone had messaged me through my website. Outside of the occasional spam message regarding interior planning and real estate license lessons— there haven’t been many messages or comments on the site itself. So, as I read through an unexpected birthday message thirty minutes before the clock hit midnight and graced me with another notch on the age tree, I read the kind of off-the-wall, magical realism, curious question type of message that I can’t say for certain I know who it came from.

But I can say that I love the style. The panache of the phrases. The trilogy of descriptive outlines to who you see me as were delightful to read. Although the end line was a bit foreboding— but maybe I read it wrong.

All in all, what a way to signal the start of the end for my twenties. A semi-spooky, but sweet message followed by a peaceful reflection on my porch as I stared out at the orange-tinted roadway that curls around the edge of the bay. The dark waters reflecting the stars— and on and on time disappeared into the night.

Unravel

We are afraid of being unmade. But that’s not something that can be done. You cannot unmake. You can only change.

Unraveled like ribbon— the bow ends of a gift, scant few of us appreciate the scope of until expiration draws near.

How do you live with that knowledge alive in your heart? How does the dragon breath of existence merge with gratitude?

How might we live thankful lives in spite of the pain and trouble? And how do we embrace that which scares us like children in a thunderstorm?

Do not tarry, nor pray pretend.

The footsteps of death ghost behind you. A waiting shawl to be set over your shoulders as you’re guided beyond this world.

Thy Huntsman Ascendeth

I ascend the stairs with military caution— keeping my head on a swivel for the rogue huntsman that terrorized my balcony only days earlier. It’s the second of its kind to lurk by my door.

I must look like a deranged, absentee father rifling through discount presents trying to find anything to salvage a meager relationship with their neglected child. Wild eyes and a fear of being challenged head on. The huntsman holds the psychological advantage, that eight-legged fuck.

The summer heat is a brutal, watery heat. Sweat droplets gather on my arm as I debate turning the AC back on. I open the sliding door and ponder just using the breeze. It’s not much help, but it’s something. And then I see them— I rarely look down into the door tracks, except to ensure the rickety screen door doesn’t fall off again. But I see those brown legs stretching out from the sides of the metal.

I had been looking in the wrong place every time I looked up.

The monster lived below.

Snorkel

Steering wheel with the strength of playdoh. It bends and bucks under my hands— I wonder if it’ll twist off the console and leave me without direction. Idle thoughts of comparisons to twizzlers make me laugh as I sit behind a cement truck.

A spam-pink back from the snorkeling session. A shaky hand showing a bevy of fish below the ways. Electric blue, zebra stripes, yellow rings, all a vortex of color and movement as the schools zoom through the reefs.

A sputtered start with a heavy dose of saline. The filter had slipped off the snorkel entry. I sucked in more seawater than set of Oceanside bellows and flopped around the surf as I struggled to sort it out.

It’s nearing my birthday and it’s weird I didn’t even think to make plans for it. It sat on the calendar with the same guise as the rest of the other days. No great difference to it’s position in the middle of the week.