Lunatic Fringe

From the Washington Post: "I have decided to run for re-election in 2010 in the Democratic primary," said Specter in a statement. "I am ready, willing and anxious to take on all comers and have my candidacy for re-election determined in a general election." He added: "Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans." President Obama was informed of Specter's decision at around 10:25 a.m., according to White House officials, and reached out to the senator minutes later to tell him "you have my full support," and we are "thrilled to have you." Specter as a Democrat would also fundamentally alter the 2010 calculus in Pennsylvania as he was expected to face a difficult primary challenge next year...

To see the world in a grain of sand, and to see heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hands, and eternity in an hour. -William Blake, Auguries of Innocence. I gaze into the doorway of temptation's angry flame And every time I pass that way I always hear my name Then onward in my journey I come to understand That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand. -Bob Dylan, Every Grain of Sand. Each grain of sand a tiny work of art. Absolutely one of my favorite ideas, a wonderful visual representation of the idea I've always tried to convey.

When I think about how you leave me hanging, it all really falls away until I'm left to lie about where it all went wrong. Just about ever right now you're my re-occurring daydream. On good days I bet against banks of morality where I have no account. I wager I'm soon to write all my sins away, a vice of a bid pitting all I may imagine against all the wicked things I've done. I'm certain I'll balance the books a second before I reach hell. Irony: burning eternally a moment after I cease to burn for you. And on bad days payments are called to interest, and I'm left with just my thoughts- for the devil takes his due in the things I might have said to make this all better- and they're all made of gasoline. My brain becomes as much a funeral pyre as a drowning place for well intentioned thoughts. Laboriously, I stoke the embers of memory which smolder here. I wonder incessantly why your father ever bid you carry a flame for me. It is in that instant before i...

I'll lay on the couch in a silk bathrobe, dazing in and out of consciousness... you can write me wonderful stories... ... A muse with a missive. Muses inspire creation. I have thought of words to match these visions in the morning. At the midday I rested and pondered not except what was before me. In the afternoon I sought reason in distraction, in time I pondered words to convey these visions. In odd intervals I would speak, in odd moments I would not. In the evening I go to places where men seek happiness, and find a semblance of reason in the plaintiff woes of the day. My problems steal away, I am soothed by the solace of the implacable task before me: Chronicling these silken visions. I think in a vibrant blue, thought-streams patterned after places I've never been. In the night I scheme on words to accompany your suggestions, I can think of none but what you have said most succinctly. These days are wrought with conspiracy to bring to fruition the promise of "lost day...

Was there time yesterday love? When last we laid down? The night progressed until everything went backward. But the past cannot be revisited, just remembered. Was it a game in the hallway, when we came together? You smoking just like you swore you never would, me on fire like I swore I’d never be again. Here beside me, the silence is disquieting, everything is calm, I’m writing my thoughts onto the small of your back. You are asleep, and I know no one will ever read these words, least of all you. I have no paper, I have no pen, just flesh on flesh, fingers whispering lithely of mortality on pages the world will never read. I half-think the great bards would weep, could they read the thoughts written here. Quaintly, I saved them all this time, for a day I knew would come, to share them only with you. Quickly, these emotions steal away from me, if only they could find your heart, speak to the places where my words fail. My time is short, all things are that way between you and I. I cry h...

I’ve been distracted lately. More busy than distracted, but the two relate. Quite simply I’m torn between what I should share and what is best kept inside. To be certain there are thoughts so morose that I’d never share them, out of consideration for anybody I care about enough to share with. I wonder if I’m doing anyone a favor in these instances, just like I hope there’ll be a time for these stories to tell themselves. For better or worse this is what life’s about. I acknowledge I’m in a coping stage of course, coming to grips with certain things, entertaining certain ideas, letting certain things go. Hemingway said what we win in Boston, we lose in Chicago. I relate that to people. Certain things end, and others begin. We lose old friends; we make new ones, or regain old ones. I had a brilliant conversation last night with my prodigal son, only he is a she, and a one-time love interest. Once we had dispensed with the how has your life been’s to rehash the last year or so we got to t...

All these roads going nowhere. My eyes on everything except what’s in front of us, we’ll get there soon enough though, I know. Hundreds of different streets, they were somedays once too. Just like me, I could’ve been any one of them. But not today, for me, maybe someday. Hundreds of streets. Millions of different houses, unique to each all are questions they beg. Special to all are their outlooks on the world. I wonder what they could’ve told me- maybe shown something different- if they were mine. Maybe too if I knew something different I’d be there now- in the instant just passed- intent on seeing for the first time something I’ve missed for just this long. There is so much left to know in each and every one of them, and really, to me, that makes them all the same. I suppose they’ve shown me something already. Or maybe I’d be half a world away from here, had I known that something sooner, indifferent to these possibilities though, these ideas and places just passed, pass me by. They’v...

And so we turn for home, in a car still not quite warm. He climbs into my lap and very quickly falls asleep, as if to say the hard part of today is over. My mind races, my reflexes though are unresponsive, and we nose along at the same speed, as if I were not having these thoughts at all. I think about a million things, about how it still hasn’t fully fallen upon me that the gray hairs I see in the mirror are not temporary, are not so much just a stage as they are a passage. A betrayal of the body that the mind has failed to acknowledge, and there will be more to come, I fear. Comfort is a good thing, as is peace, and even though these are disjointed thoughts I never wanted to find myself in a position where I would be willing to accept small victories. But that’s what life seems to be, acquiescing increasingly meager positions in a losing war, under the guise of dignity, and wisdom. I find myself struggling with the fact that we are too absorbed in childish things to appreciate our fo...

It’s late, the music keeps the time, endures, as the hours pass. I feel your voice like the touch of your skin, soft and slow. Sometimes it feels like drowning, but if there are fates worse than a death like this, I care not to know. We take guesses, we make promises, things we’ll do, places we’ll go, time ticks, despite these wishes. Your eyes are quiet, like the darkness you’ll soon go out in to; my heart is on fire, for me a light, like your laughter. We’re not supposed to realize there are so many things we’ll never know. I worry about you, but then I’ve worried about everything I’ve ever loved. Every reason, every feeling, every firework you’ve burned within me, they’re still there. You move slow across my mind, clouds in the sky in the summer you are, sometimes. And somewhere in the corner of my eye I catch a memory, and I swear it’s like I just found you. Sometimes you just stay there, maybe I can’t look away. It worries me to I think it’s a sin to care still; I guess I always w...

Like a feather caught in a vortex, Williams ran around the square of bases at the center of our beseeching screaming. He ran as he always ran out home runs—hurriedly, unsmiling, head down, as if our praise were a storm of rain to get out of. He didn't tip his cap. Though we thumped, wept, and chanted "We want Ted" for minutes after he hid in the dugout, he did not come back. Our noise for some seconds passed beyond excitement into a kind of immense open anguish, a wailing, a cry to be saved. But immortality is nontransferable. The papers said that the other players, and even the umpires on the field, begged him to come out and acknowledge us in some way, but he never had and did not now. Gods do not answer letters. John Updike March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009

And there are moments when you see the whole world, in a way you'd never imagine, though just as it's forever been. It's not the world that's different, just you, just a different point of view. And you're caught in that moment, even as the world is still spinning, an indelible moment in a world of incessant change. And it all matters because it's the love of something, something temporal, something forever fleeting. In the mean time the world carries on as before, the briefest of sunsets like a knowing wink to wit that even this too will someday change. There's an idea that it should all be different- the world as it is, and love- to be the other way around. But maybe everything should be just exactly as it is. At least just for now. And I wonder if this is something I'll remember for the rest of my life.

Mr. Brown woke up one morning with a purpose. He had a meeting with death. Everything was, this morning, just as it was the night before. Perhaps Mr. Brown was a day older, only in the sense of time, though, to the human eye nothing had changed. But still, perhaps things had changed, the difference as obvious as the difference between night and day, sometimes are not entirely easy to see, over a course of time so minimal as the passing of night in to day. The thought lingered like the overcast morning outside his window. Mr. Brown remained a moment longer in bed, pondering his reservations, thought over this later reservation, but into his thoughts he lapsed back, and in bed remained not a moment longer. Mr. Brown became automated. The day, like so many others in a long span before it, had begun. His creaky knees squeaked, he rolled across the bed springs. Even after his wife had passed, ever since he was a small child, Mr. Brown was in the habit of pushing his bed towards a windowless...

And we all make it so cool, when we take our turns. Me though, I just fake it, pull a dazed grin and fake at being cool. I wear every bad beat like a badge, and I got a story to match. Maybe these guys fake too, must be they play it better than me, I can’t see a crack, no tells showin'. Maybe it hasn’t gotten them yet, but then, we ain’t young anymore, maybe just not old enough yet to break. Me at least, I got an old soul, with the cracks and leaks and chipping paint to prove it, ‘least I can read me like a book, but that's easy. Not these guys though, old hands at poker, every last one. Except for this guy, I see now, he’s crackin’ too. Calls her crazy in off-hand ways, the other guys laugh- yea they play it cool- they’re all crazy. Me I just smile, I don’t fake so good anymore. Me, I’m feelin’ that bad beat too. Looks like he’s getting hot, it’s gettin’ late. We all just laugh, fellas say she's getting mad, no, she’s just gettin’ a cab, gonna get outta here, looks like sh...

My head spins when I get something in it, when I lie down everything just starts coming off sideways. Guess I really am unbalanced. Give it time, sleep on it, you’ll see it too, different vantage, different point of view. I thought about figuring out a different change, new solutions to old problems, shoot the idea in mind full of holes, but then I get a sneaking suspicion that these are sinking thoughts. Next thing you know, they’ll tell me hope floats, I know better, down here everything stinks. Someone said something once, about a sad girl, a long time ago, to me. But I won't bore you with the details, I'll tell you something else that's mundane instead. And here's what I told her. And I'll be specific. What’s passed is past, I’m sure you're smiling now, being unhappy about being sad is never a condition that lasts too long, it's important to remember that. In any case it’s when you realize nothing at all is a condition that lasts too long, that you’re r...

Our hearts fill with darkness, our souls become black. Days wane, are replaced by eminent night. Like this we fade away, destined to become a part of the echoes. Our words, and their meanings, lost amongst the shadows. Could we have done a thing differently? I don't think so, there's no going back, once there's been a change of heart. That's beyond me now, something the past digs up when it's inconvenient. All we can be sure of, all I can be certain of, is a grainy look at the emotional remains, of anything that once was, remnants of feelings and prejudices and battles now past. Though to recollection they're just as vital, just as anxious as they are in truth, dead. Diseased and deceased I suppose. A bunch of feelings, and thoughts no longer healthy enough to be amongst the living. Still they endure, beyond time they linger, we move on, we move away, but we know the truth is somewhere back there, in time, and in place. Me? I like to lay about the graveyard, I...

From the Associated Press. Better Late than never.

I saw her walking. One in a million, say. But I saw her. Yes, I saw her first. The sun was shining, but I’m not smiling. I wasn’t smiling. I’m just a lonely street. Reaching from somewhere back East, I find myself here. My memories are all points east. Like the water where I begun, I am a river, the course is before me, now, that must be run. I am a silent street, I do not stop or speak, til I find the water, an end again, so much like where I begun. So the sun rises, it’s always comin’ up behind me. The sun also rises, in her world, the sun sets away from here. The sun sets on us apart. She is near me today, I saw her walking. Always longitudinal, I long to be near her. My life knows is a discourse of solely latitude, and always she goes forth, her eyes to the south, or glowing to the north. It is always the glance that is least, that casts her eyes to the east, for but an instant she spies me, but I am but a lonely street, my promises merely platitudes. Where is she tonight? The moon...

A good life is comprised of the following: a great deal of determination, coupled with; happy circumstance, and; love. Good friends are the alchemist's truth, and the sole one at that, in man's quest for gold, and a life by the golden mean.

So my ex thought it was a bad thing to call a girl a "cunt." I'd like to counter with, look how far John McCain's gotten! Where once there was shame, and stigma, there is now pride. I consider myself in good company, see you next tuesday, ladies!