Wind For Embers
Wind to dry out the flood. Cold to freeze what remains.
The protocol I decided upon yesterday: Dress for an afternoon of walking, sitting, or any other (non-)activity. I'll roll by my little brother (JH)'s neighborhood and hope that we can share an afternoon talking.
What I didn't want was to hear his dog barking two blocks from the apartment, to then find the door ajar and some horrendous addition to the furniture. Some morbid history to the building. To then lift swinging legs. Or lift a lightened head, a craned neck. To know the story that hundreds would contemplate when passing red and blue lights and an open-doored ambulance awaiting an unmistakable form under heavy blankets.
I follow the protocol. I see the familiar truck parked in its normal spot. I don't see his car, though. The internal voice I hear for contingency plans and emergency scenarios continues down the order of operations: Call again. Again-again. If he doesn't pick up, and you don't hear a dog barking, open the door. Call out. If he doesn't answer, peer inside...
I call and, thankfully, get an answer. A location. The pub just a few doors down.
Before swinging my leg over the metallic steed known as the Cannondale H600 (or, "Rocannondalete" if we're going with the journal's titular theme), I can't help but stop and smile at the treetop racket above me. The cackle of the grackle. It appears that the murmuration that's hovered around Midtown for the past week has also touched down in VA-HI. I could listen to this congregation for hours.
~ ~
Distracted. Mostly on his phone. I figured: This is what guys do, right? Other than my older brother, I've only really had one other male friend, and his upbringing in Brazil and England stands him apart from most other guys in this country. After forty-two years in this world, I still don't know how to interact with others sometimes. Even family.
The internal anthropologist-voice chimed in: According to decades of studies, men usually bond by spending time around a third thing, something other than direct face-to-face interrogative communication; hence the prevalence of watching or participating in sports... True to form, we had triangulated around the corner of the bar, me sitting toward the mirrored backing of bottles, him standing where staff usually come and go.
Took less than a minute for me to halve my drink. Better save this as a prop.
Took another few minutes of sitting in the raucous din of bar noise for me to try and conjure some conversation piece, something to say when my brother would eventually finish business on his phone.
Nothing come to mind.
"Smoke," he asked.
I've never had a cigarette in my life.
"God, yes."
~ ~
Outside, the gusts of wind expand the cigarette smoke, enveloping the only non-smoker. JH's older friend apologizes constantly, but I admit that I've always liked being around smokers. "Reminds me of my grandparents."
"What's that, a snap," she asks and reaches for the first fastener on my shirt. "Oh, I didn't mean to--"
"Pearl snaps," I admit. I leave it unfastened. Not because I want to passively hit on a seventy-year old lesbian, but because it's evidence of something. Something real from the mystical "Bar Life." The closest we Sunday drinkers can get to communion and fellowship among the spirits of Dionysus and happenstance.
"Can I see the rest of the shirt? Undo those jackets," she says. I'm happy to show off. This isn't necessarily 'western wear,' it's simply what I wore out west, what I wear here in this city.
"Look at that," she says. "What a lovely shirt!"
"Panhandle Slim."
My brother says again, "Gyahdaym d' buckle." The pewter plate is nearly twenty-eight years old and depicts the most popular mountain feature of my home on the ranch. Over the years, it's grown its own greenage; a subtle patina over the embossed forests and shrubs that form a gum line around a rocky Tooth.
JH unleashes plumes of smoke with each word, "G'damn," he says, his lips pinching a fresh cigarette, "that shits beautiful, brother..."
"I tell you what," our older friend says, "you just have to stand here with those jackets undone, and you'll get a woman in the next two minutes."
But the chill is something I still can't get used to feeling, not when I've become mostly skeleton and ghost-flesh. I zip up the jackets. I'd usually find comfort and solace standing amid 20mph winds in 40° weather. But not now. Not when I feel like fencepost buried by a blizzard.
As I zip it all back up, the internal statistician-voice states: 95% of the women who show interest in me are married.
Instead, I say: "Haven't had much luck in those regards. It's been seven years single, now."
"What brought you to Atlanta?"
"A girl."
My little brother curses, a metaphoric kick in solidarity over past pains.
Simultaneously, as if to prove our older friend's prognostications, our attention is taken by a car pulling up to the curb right beside us. The car stops. Hazard lights blinking. A window rolls down just in time for the driver to see a couple--a woman and man who hailed his rideshare--coming out of the pub and toward the car. They both caw out exclamations over the cold gusts.
The man quickly moves from behind the woman, having opened up the pub door, to now zipping ahead and opening the car door. In that ever-so-quick moment, she looks at me and smiles.
The internal advertiser says: 9.5 out of 10 dentists agree: You shouldn't sleep with a married woman... and you definitely shouldn't ask about that one-half dentist.
Shortly afterward, another car pulls up. My little brother says, "Wulp," between lips pinching a cig and embraces me like a bear hugging a snowman, "this's me." He also hugs our older friend, flicks the smoke to the curb, and steps into the car. It's all so fast. I don't think the car actually stops, and the embers of the cigarette are still in a minor flurry before the car speeds away. I can't see the woman driving the car, but overhear that he's apparently off to the aquarium.
The internal Texan tipped his hat and said: Hell, reckon he's better off than me.
I spend the next hour or so chatting with all of JH's friends; all of whom immediately adopt me as a friend-by-association. We stand next to the doorway like ushers to some never-ending Mass service. They all share stories about how my little brother had helped them out, or was pivotal in some remarkable situation.
Looking back now on my past visions, the imagined mortal results of my brother's emotional state, I'm relieved to see them as wild overdramatizations. Everything was based on fear, and those fears are based on not inserting myself as much as I should. As his spiritual elder kin, I should stand out more, like that fencepost that still remains after everything has melted.
~ ~
Another walk. The wind continues unabated, carrying away most traces of the drowned world.
I pass more portentous scenes. Arrangements of oddities. Random menageries that I would understand if I only had an elevated perspective...
...but all I can know for sure is that these snapshots, these ephemeral views of nocturnal divinations, are only afforded to the single occupant displacing fog from the soil and moving smoke from the embers in the streets.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ataşehir - a cold breeze blew through the smoking area and I shivered for a second
[Listen on bandcamp]
Ataşehir - a cold breeze blew through the smoking area and I shivered for a second
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The protocol I decided upon yesterday: Dress for an afternoon of walking, sitting, or any other (non-)activity. I'll roll by my little brother (JH)'s neighborhood and hope that we can share an afternoon talking.
What I didn't want was to hear his dog barking two blocks from the apartment, to then find the door ajar and some horrendous addition to the furniture. Some morbid history to the building. To then lift swinging legs. Or lift a lightened head, a craned neck. To know the story that hundreds would contemplate when passing red and blue lights and an open-doored ambulance awaiting an unmistakable form under heavy blankets.
I follow the protocol. I see the familiar truck parked in its normal spot. I don't see his car, though. The internal voice I hear for contingency plans and emergency scenarios continues down the order of operations: Call again. Again-again. If he doesn't pick up, and you don't hear a dog barking, open the door. Call out. If he doesn't answer, peer inside...
I call and, thankfully, get an answer. A location. The pub just a few doors down.
Before swinging my leg over the metallic steed known as the Cannondale H600 (or, "Rocannondalete" if we're going with the journal's titular theme), I can't help but stop and smile at the treetop racket above me. The cackle of the grackle. It appears that the murmuration that's hovered around Midtown for the past week has also touched down in VA-HI. I could listen to this congregation for hours.
~ ~
Distracted. Mostly on his phone. I figured: This is what guys do, right? Other than my older brother, I've only really had one other male friend, and his upbringing in Brazil and England stands him apart from most other guys in this country. After forty-two years in this world, I still don't know how to interact with others sometimes. Even family.
The internal anthropologist-voice chimed in: According to decades of studies, men usually bond by spending time around a third thing, something other than direct face-to-face interrogative communication; hence the prevalence of watching or participating in sports... True to form, we had triangulated around the corner of the bar, me sitting toward the mirrored backing of bottles, him standing where staff usually come and go.
Took less than a minute for me to halve my drink. Better save this as a prop.
Took another few minutes of sitting in the raucous din of bar noise for me to try and conjure some conversation piece, something to say when my brother would eventually finish business on his phone.
Nothing come to mind.
"Smoke," he asked.
I've never had a cigarette in my life.
"God, yes."
~ ~
Outside, the gusts of wind expand the cigarette smoke, enveloping the only non-smoker. JH's older friend apologizes constantly, but I admit that I've always liked being around smokers. "Reminds me of my grandparents."
"What's that, a snap," she asks and reaches for the first fastener on my shirt. "Oh, I didn't mean to--"
"Pearl snaps," I admit. I leave it unfastened. Not because I want to passively hit on a seventy-year old lesbian, but because it's evidence of something. Something real from the mystical "Bar Life." The closest we Sunday drinkers can get to communion and fellowship among the spirits of Dionysus and happenstance.
"Can I see the rest of the shirt? Undo those jackets," she says. I'm happy to show off. This isn't necessarily 'western wear,' it's simply what I wore out west, what I wear here in this city.
"Look at that," she says. "What a lovely shirt!"
"Panhandle Slim."
My brother says again, "Gyahdaym d' buckle." The pewter plate is nearly twenty-eight years old and depicts the most popular mountain feature of my home on the ranch. Over the years, it's grown its own greenage; a subtle patina over the embossed forests and shrubs that form a gum line around a rocky Tooth.
JH unleashes plumes of smoke with each word, "G'damn," he says, his lips pinching a fresh cigarette, "that shits beautiful, brother..."
"I tell you what," our older friend says, "you just have to stand here with those jackets undone, and you'll get a woman in the next two minutes."
But the chill is something I still can't get used to feeling, not when I've become mostly skeleton and ghost-flesh. I zip up the jackets. I'd usually find comfort and solace standing amid 20mph winds in 40° weather. But not now. Not when I feel like fencepost buried by a blizzard.
As I zip it all back up, the internal statistician-voice states: 95% of the women who show interest in me are married.
Instead, I say: "Haven't had much luck in those regards. It's been seven years single, now."
"What brought you to Atlanta?"
"A girl."
My little brother curses, a metaphoric kick in solidarity over past pains.
Simultaneously, as if to prove our older friend's prognostications, our attention is taken by a car pulling up to the curb right beside us. The car stops. Hazard lights blinking. A window rolls down just in time for the driver to see a couple--a woman and man who hailed his rideshare--coming out of the pub and toward the car. They both caw out exclamations over the cold gusts.
The man quickly moves from behind the woman, having opened up the pub door, to now zipping ahead and opening the car door. In that ever-so-quick moment, she looks at me and smiles.
The internal advertiser says: 9.5 out of 10 dentists agree: You shouldn't sleep with a married woman... and you definitely shouldn't ask about that one-half dentist.
Shortly afterward, another car pulls up. My little brother says, "Wulp," between lips pinching a cig and embraces me like a bear hugging a snowman, "this's me." He also hugs our older friend, flicks the smoke to the curb, and steps into the car. It's all so fast. I don't think the car actually stops, and the embers of the cigarette are still in a minor flurry before the car speeds away. I can't see the woman driving the car, but overhear that he's apparently off to the aquarium.
The internal Texan tipped his hat and said: Hell, reckon he's better off than me.
I spend the next hour or so chatting with all of JH's friends; all of whom immediately adopt me as a friend-by-association. We stand next to the doorway like ushers to some never-ending Mass service. They all share stories about how my little brother had helped them out, or was pivotal in some remarkable situation.
Looking back now on my past visions, the imagined mortal results of my brother's emotional state, I'm relieved to see them as wild overdramatizations. Everything was based on fear, and those fears are based on not inserting myself as much as I should. As his spiritual elder kin, I should stand out more, like that fencepost that still remains after everything has melted.
~ ~
Another walk. The wind continues unabated, carrying away most traces of the drowned world.
I pass more portentous scenes. Arrangements of oddities. Random menageries that I would understand if I only had an elevated perspective...
...but all I can know for sure is that these snapshots, these ephemeral views of nocturnal divinations, are only afforded to the single occupant displacing fog from the soil and moving smoke from the embers in the streets.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ataşehir - a cold breeze blew through the smoking area and I shivered for a second
[Listen on bandcamp]
Ataşehir - a cold breeze blew through the smoking area and I shivered for a second
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~