A Thousand Words

I invite you over, pour you a drink in a smallish crystal glass with clinking ice cubes, tell you to relax and from out of the back room I come with my slide projector and screen. You roll your eyes and throw back your drink. A little bit of bourbon dribbles off your lip and on to your white shirt. Your in for a long night. Enjoy!

Mt. Baker and the Twin Sisters brooding over our fair city


The Bridge


Innocents!


Frodo-Son


The wonder years.

Subterrianian Death Chamber/Space Interogation Room

If you're like me, you're heart beats just a bit faster each time you open a door. There is always that thrilling chance that on the other side you'll find another world. I've visited such places before, if only in dreams. This evening I opened my microwave and to my astonishment, found myself in a strange and unfamiliar world. It wasn't the golden wheat fields I long for but one can hardly be picky when magic manifests itself behind doors. The history of violence in that brutal den is terrifying. I stood dumb struck, frozen burritos in hand, between two worlds.



Here, flip it upside down and you see what I'm talking about.

Frank Brikowski

There is this hermit woman that lives across the street who in our rowdier days would would scream at us to keep the noise down. She lives in a house made out of siding that looks like fake brick. We started calling her the Fake Brick House Lady. That eventually evolved in to Frank Brikowski. Frank for short. We were at the Co-Op the other day and ran into someone from a different circle that mentioned Frank Brikowski. I wonder how far this has spread:)

The Return of The King

Today was an absolutley wonderful day. My parents came up this morning to go to church with me. I am a major Lord of the Rings nerd right now as I'm reading it again (this is one tradition I started five years ago and want to continue through out my life and pass on to my children: to read The Lord of the Rings every spring). So I was reading them one of my favorite passages when my neigbors came down and saved my parents from my ramblings and whisked us off to church. The first thing I saw when we got into the church was that some in the congragation were waving flags with orange and red and yellow tongues and the choir was singing a Jewish song and there were bongos! It is Pentacost! To see the banners waving and people singing like that just filled me to the brim with overflowing joy! I have been walking on clouds all day. I can't wait for the Return of the King! The flags, the confettii, the laughter and the song. After the service, when we all spilled out onto the stone steps outside, underneath the stain glass, I longed for a trumpet in my hands to blow a mighty note!

Cinco de Mayo en Bellingham, WA, USA

I'm sitting on the porch watching the youth of America stumble down the street shouting profanities. The people on the porch are probably the only sober people within a four block radius. I'm struck by the horror of it, how maybe I'm stuck in one of the modern zombie flicks like 28 Weeks Later. Where are the flags that were waving, the horns that were blowing? Where are the men of renown? The women of honor? Where are the humble, the chaste, the wise?

In the Garden

I've noticed something peculiar about people. They seem to always be incomplete presently, but participating in a program towards completelness. This makes my heart ache. I wish we were all fully realized beings.

Essence

It is getting late but I wanted to jot some things down before turning out the light. I've been thinking about truth and magic in story. I was talking with my brother and made a few discoveries that I can't wait to explore more when I have more time. See, that story I sketched out the other day about Hawaii and the color of my face, I've learned something important about it. My first reaction to the woman's question about the redness of my skin was defensive: she was pointing out an imperfection. But that's just silly. Here is what I think was really going on, the old woman at that breakfast cafe with her over ripe husband and ancient mother, sat in a heavy silence on a bright Sunday morning. Perhaps she sat there and watched me, a young man, talking passionately with my brother, slurping cup after cup of coffee--maybe she saw youth or charisma. Maybe it brought back memories, fantasies. Maybe she saw my red face and smile and thought of somewhere tropical where the sun always shines. And so when she asked me, where I'd been to get such a tan, maybe she wanted a story of adventures at the equator--snorkeling, pirates, coconut bombs, grass skirts. Maybe my answer, though a lie, was exactly what she needed. I'd like to think that I gave her a dream of sand and sun and she went home to cook a spicy dish for her aged husband.

And that is what writing is about. Gifts of visions--this is the essence of fiction. I'm more of a liar than a writer but it is awesome when truth presents itself so clearly.