. . .

This is a familiar story about life. This is not about exceptional talents or passions, for I believe one can find that in almost everyone, myself included. Instead, this is about exceptional difficulties or ridiculous challenges, such as a father’s death. But, perhaps none of this matters; nothing as simple as death should matter. After all, it is as apparent as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west.


Father, you are such a distant memory. Yet, nothing can solace the profound heartache of my forgetting you, often. And if often is not enough, then what absolute time can I offer. -It is not your long life I celebrate, but the death of you that raises new possibilities. Such as, a child’s soft face or the flower’s occasion in a winter’s reprieve.

And, now, I know what it is to feel alone. And I know what it is to think of you, alone. -Are soft faces or open flowers keeping you busy . . .

And, are there ever times when you forget me, often?

I watch over a house of men

I watch over a house of men. These are not ordinary men. These are men whose dreams are forgotten on us all.

What do they dream about, these roosted men? Perhaps, through their faltered language they insist on quiet and pervasive dreams. Yet, their phonology and semantics fail me. For the life of me, for their life, I want to understand.

Perhaps, one remembers a picture of his mother as a child, “Big, Big woman –little, little girl. Where have you been?”
- - -

When I’m asleep, I may dream of a girl with long brown hair. Do I sleep on it by mistake? What is her name? Will the name precede mine one day? And so forth. Sometimes, these are the things I dream of when asleep in the house of extraordinary men.

You will grow old. You will be forgotten.

This is mine to tell: when I’m old, I will be forgotten.

- - -

My name is not important. It hasn’t been since the Romantics. Besides, this is about you and not me. –Once, you had luxurious hair and you had love. You had a pink face, like the pink on a Valentine’s Day card.

But there are fleeting things you did in youth; such as, kiss your high school sweetheart on her deceitful lips, fall drunkenly into a stranger’s bed, or remain deep in a woman long after she abandoned you. These are the things that you did in youth, which make you old.

However, the sadness of life is there can be no sadness. In the hopes and expectations of childhood, you never had examples of love. From the beginning it was only "you shall age" and "you will experience sickness" –perhaps some sort of death. And this is all so Buddhist to you, when you just wanted to be Christian, (I agree, but this story is about you and not about me).