I had a beer and allergies today on the balcony. They were cutting down a tree across the street. They couldn’t do it all at once, they had to tie ropes around the limbs. They fed the pieces into a machine that ground them to dust. The dust settled on cars nearby and a man sprayed the cars with a gas powered leaf blower. The clouds settled in, and I fell asleep to piano music punctuated by the din.
Tag Archives: spring
Correspondence: 22.04.16
from: Gordon Flanders
to: Babe
date: Friday, April 22, 2016 at 1:04 PM
subject: rot and recreation
My sister-in-law may be behind me as I type, is behind me, but may get closer and close enough to read what I am writing because one of the cat’s opened the door and I am wearing headphones. I am listless. I know no bounds except the ones I deduce based on learned constraints. Behind. Front. Inside.
The passages you sent to me last week are magnificent. I like the way the Hemingway one speaks and I like what the Ferrante one says. Especially the part with the emotional implosion. I am trying to be at peace with making a spectacle of myself. Why not? Let the happy be calm. I won’t try to emulate them for now. One day I will regain a state of yin, to borrow a word that I don’t understand.
I am reading a few books as well, though finishing seems like a remote prospect. But that’s the nature of time, isn’t it, and the nature of me, not to see the pattern. I am reading a book called Blessed about the history of the prosperity movement in American Christianity. It’s helpful in understanding many of the cultural forces that shaped my childhood, among other things. I am reading a book about information warfare called Dark Territory: The Secret History of the Cyber War. It’s by Fred Kaplan. It’s a lot of facts and such like that. I am still reading Imajica by Clive Barker which is a fantastic story recommended to me by the artist at Accidental Tentacles.
I loved reading your short story, slumming. I love gesturing to the loo and then making a snappy exit, especially when there are catered drinks.
I am pleased with the writing I’ve done since I wrote you last. I have some gray hair and I can feel the demons meeting for a quiet tea after a long night. We’ve followed your example and closed the curtains; we’ve shut out the diseased spring. And yet, of course, the spring and I have an animated past which we neither of us can manage to forget.
Be good, but don’t tell anyone you’re doing it. You won’t. But anyway.
-G
Anyone's Ghost 