I wandered into a quiet place with the tall grass all I could see
Won’t you lay hands on me?
Withered down to smithereens with mottled rains tanning untouched auras
Banshee scream lifting up the sky
Cinnamon love in high morning
I’m looking for gold in the valley of the gods
Last palms open with sweet breath fever
By the night it’ll be distant futures with hearts of diamond dappled blue.
In the space of the weekend, the trajectory of many things changed. I was finally hired by the substitute company for teaching, and I also got into the course for my next national level coaching license.
And then my second eldest aunt also passed away. She had a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease. I know that she was ready to pass on and didn’t want to live in the pain that she was living.
Today I helped donate a lot of her things with my cousin. We made several trips in and out of the memory facility in East Portland and I would make eye contact and smile with the residence that were in the gathering room, but I didn’t want to spend much time around them. I didn’t want to face what feels to be inevitable future that I will know soon enough.
In the next couple months, I doubt there will be many days where I have free moments. Monday through Thursday will be packed with teaching and coaching several different teams. And the weekends will feature games from three different age groups that I coach. It will be that Fridays are the only free day.
it’s funny how we can go through seasons of immense effort and complete coasting. I can’t say that I truly worked that much in my two years over in Japan. I had a much tougher time dealing with emotional challenges and the language barrier than the work itself.
I think my values have also changed. Or maybe it’s that my goals have. I realize the other day that I haven’t been in love with someone for four years. That feels weird. I understand that two of those years are tied up with living on a rural island halfway across the world, but the other time was spent in the mire of self-questioning.
All there is to do is to enjoy the days that I have and go after these goals of mine that have held close to my heart for over a decade, but now I’ve found the courage and lack of time to make it happen. The remaining seconds on the clock are not infinite.
The key sparks on the lock after the elevator ride—a small static charge that erupts and dissipates in the same breath. The light blue ball of lightning captures my attention every time.
I walked through Northwest today as the realtor showed the condo to prospective buyers. The sun shone down as I meandered through the blocks, listening to episodes of “Here Be Monsters” by Jeff Emtmann. I avoided staying on the same side of the street when confronted by Rasputin-looking figures that shuffled in place. I’d woken up feeling the quarter-key turn of the new year begging me to continue on in a positive fashion. To resemble the blue-white spark of the static energy that conjures at the door.
Idle consumption of time is a struggle that seems to inundate every facet of modern society. I don’t think I know many people who don’t at least sometimes complain about the attention economy that’s led to a constant barrage of dings, flashes, pings, pop-ups, and jolts in attempts to focus our meager concentration on a product.
A $36 Million boat named the Queen Anne Water Beetle that had a route between Fukuoka and Busan hid a serial leak on the ship. Apparently, the Jetfoil was too expensive to repair, but in the leak being leaked (haha punderful) the company was forced to close the line as they didn’t have another boat for the service.
Now, if you’re asking what this has to do with the price of milk, you’d be right in thinking the answer is absolutely nothing.
It does inspire the thought of how tenuous, seemingly invincible societal infrastructure is. It was just like the beginning of COVID-19 when the race for groceries was on, and everything cleared out before the hats dropped. We live in an elaborate ruse if you’re conditioned to believing that we exist as fully separate nations instead of some slow transnational meld.
Today was the first time I’d been involved in my high school soccer program in over a month. It was a reminder of the importance of building community and also the joy and ridiculousness my players exude.
I have questions about how the hell Alvaro Morata keeps getting starting striker positions at top clubs in Europe.
He’s currently playing for AC Milan— a storied club known for playing at the historic San Siro stadium that’s shared with Inter Milan.
Morata has played at Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid, Juventus, Chelsea, and now AC Milan. That’s a crazy list of clubs. Another player who had played for the same range of clubs would be considered one of the greatest of all time, or at the very least, one of the best of their generation.
That’s not the case with Alvaro. Even with the international winds that he has had with Spain, he is not considered a talisman striker. But obviously he brings a level of experience and capability to teams. But it’s wild to see essentially a sports version of failing upwards.
There’s something called the “cocksucker swivel” and buddy, you have mastered it.
But that’s something I’d expect from someone who ran off and pawned their wedding ring for an ayahuasca trip in the Andes.
There’s no rotgut whiskey that’ll ease your mind now.
Twin prop propeller plane on a downward journey. Worn rosary beads and burnt prayers can’t turn up the nose of destruction.
Bountiful harvest in a sensual weight. Each key tap echoing out past the edges of an unprepared end.
The Affable Mutt was the only place you could stop for a drink without being bothered by the Amish.
That wasn’t the worst problem after Y2K. But it did stick in Gerald’s craw. He’d thought the “end of the world” would be a more dramatic affair. Instead he was left dealing with inflated egos propped up by their lucrative butter trade.
The promised future didn’t include rival carriage makers or barn builders. All his life Gerald had been told about flying cars and space travel. They’d barely made it past jeggings and Limp Bizkit before everything went south.
It’s a new year and I find myself once again sitting in my car waiting outside the fingerprinting office on Seventh Avenue.
I submitted my teaching license renewal to be a substitute teacher again. Only this time I won’t be in Portland proper. I’ll be on both the east and west sides of town as I settle into a new routine of coaching and teaching.
It’s another year and I have a new daily story section. Last year, I really didn’t write all that much compared to the two years past. I didn’t have as much of a reason to. Even with publishing my first anthology and navigating return to Portland, I didn’t find many stories that I wanted to take beyond any of my notebooks.
I initially started my 365 story challenge to push myself creatively. It wasn’t about churning out. Highly refined works or even having stories that I thought would be imminently publishable. I wrote them because I needed something more. And I’m remembering that now as I have settled back in into Portland, and for all the friends and family, I find myself wanting more from myself.
I don’t know if this will be another go at trying to write and post something every single day. But I do believe this is the beginning of a stretch of time where I will be productive. In my eyes, I have two years ahead of me to, get my feet sorted for coaching and trying to push myself past self regulated limits for writing.
I have another anthology of stories that’s more or less ready to go. I need to edit them a little bit more and then release them with this new year. It’s little by little that dreams are realized the second anthology wouldn’t have come about without these daily stories or living so far from Portland.
“Not just an uneasy silence in the dark,” he said as a murder of crows gathered below. The night wore on Orion’s nerves as the sound seemed to creep away from him.
Living in the city, Orion wasn’t used to the fresh snow silence he’d found outside of Collyswood. The rural landscape felt like it had one last midnight before chaos broke loose. He stood on the edge of the cliff that overlooked the valley hoping he’d find the answers promised to him.
Orion returned to a small cabin on the edge of the woods. He opened the worn journal he’d brought with him from the city. He read through the crimped handwriting one line at a time. Trying to string the ideas that his brother had left behind.