Hello.

hello journal right now i’m writing and sticking to a thought that no one will ever read you, so what would i write first?

dear journal, my cast’s off.

oh journal: the weather is nice like this. i had my hand out the window the whole way down and the whole way back.

hey journal, danny the new guy ended up riding along with me, in my car, to franklinva. he’s maybe fifty five. danny used to work for reynolds metals. i just saw a robot yesterday at the aluminum foil place. danny confirmed that the place i saw, the one next to the canal, is an aluminum foil place, but it’s not reynold’s anymore. no. now it’s alcoa. al-co-a. it was a corporate buyout, journal. can you spell corporate buyout?

but they didnt keep danny. so danny had to look for a new job and now he collects statistics for us.

it was hard and difficult to make conversation with danny all the way down and all the way back, journal. and i had the windows down because it was nice out. maybe danny didn’t like the whoooshing air and he was always straightening what’s left of his hair in my passenger side mirror. journal, i couldve been a gentleman and rolled up the windows and turned on the a/c but i didn’t want to. i wanted to smell the cotton fields on that side an’ the peanuts on this side.

dear journal we ate at fred’s because it’s my favorite of all the restaurants away from home. fred’s had: mashed potatoes, fried catfish, green beans, meatloaf, barbequed pork, rolls, but no hushpuppies. journal i had bananapudding for my lunch dessert.

hello journal i have kind of a headache and i’m listening to some sigur ros and i’m pretending that these words just appear and roll a little ways down a conveyor bel/t and then drop. drop off into a deep canyon and just before they hit the bottom they go “whioooosh” and disappear into air.

nothing crashes anymore, journal.

i don’t get it, journal but i’m glad you don’t either, and dont pretend to.

dear journal i had half of a yummy stromboli last night and i’m going to have the other half soon. should i microwave it or put it in the oven?

i’ll figure something out.

oh journal: about that “my cast’s off” comment. i never had a cast on. it just popped into my head so i wrote it down. i assumed it fell off the conveyor and went whoosh but if it didnt i’m sorry. if it needs crutches now i’m sorry.

dear journal my gramma’s getting a cat tomorrow she’s been depressed and morbid about dying and sometimes i joked that she was going goth and i’d get her cure cd’s for christmas but really it’s not a joking matter and i wish my gramma had more sparks and ambition but maybe a cat will help even a little plus the doctor changed some medicine and she’s happy today. she has a dog named chloe and the cat’s name is zoe. i told her that was cute, journal. don’t you think that’s cute?

dear journal, i’m sorry about what i expect of you sometimes.

bye,
-tim.

even though it was too late for bears, it wasn’t too late to take the footpath along the narrow canal, and it wasn’t too late to spy on the operation of the reynold’s wrap packaging facility.

there were voices, but a yellow robot did all the work.

and all of the brick and chain-link fences. nora saw these things, too.

the shattered windows of abandoned riverside factories.

there are probably two thousand rocks on the dusty floor, inside, by now.

the cumulative effects of troublemaking.

and the broken bridges, the pedestals of rock across the james that looked more like a painting than anything real.

we didnt have cameras, though.

there were viaducts and the stench of stagnant murky water. there was the hum of 60Hz hydroelectric. there was yes, the yellow robot on the other side of an unguarded screen door. and we were peering through angle iron and screens. listening for voices. this was practice for espionage.

i assumed that they were packaging foil, but it could have been clingy plastic.

.

yes, we are looking into these things for you. things like this, for people like you, out there.

and now, there is talk of ghost indians in the middle of the night, spotted along the newly-constructed highway. yes, we will probably check this out for you, soon. it’s just that i’m tired by midnight, and i’m probably scared of ghosts. i have to get over these things.

it’s not a race. it’s alright to have boring phases.

it’s alright to fear.

goodnightsmalllights,smallcity.

WHO WAS BORN IN A HOUSE FULL OF PAIN
WHO WAS TRAINED NOT TO SPIT
IN THE FAN
WHO WAS TOLD WHAT TO DO
BY THE MAN
WHO WAS BROKEN BY TRAINED PERSONNEL
WHO WAS FITTED WITH COLLAR
& CHAIN
WHO WAS GIVEN A PAT ON THE BACK
WHO WAS BREAKING AWAY FROM THE PACK
WHO WAS ONLY A STRANGER AT HOME
WHO WAS GROUND DOWN IN THE END
WHO WAS FOUND DEAD ON THE PHONE
WHO WAS DRAGGED DOWN BY THE STONE.

i guess my current mindset just doesn’t go all out for detailing my current events. that and my lack of current events.

i mean, things have happened, but i’m just a bystander, is how it feels. for example, i went to new york city for the first time, last weekend. we started at battery park. i balanced on rising cement that lined the walkways. i followed my group. i ate a brownie that was more like fudge, bought from a girl behind a stand, who had a bit of an accent.

and we walked or skirted the borders of ground zero. a massive rectangular divot that should mean more to me, but maybe it’s just that i had nothing to compare the lack to. i wasnt used to the space ever housing massive skyscrapers, that should should still be there but for human ugliness and horrific misunderstandings. just another school shooting on the global level. just another of the planet’s school shooting disasters.

but there was the strip of trinkets, memorials, personal memorials, little notes written to people who are gone. the little pocket-sized prayer book out in the wind and rain, free to have its pages blown back and forth, this prayer and that prayer, as maybe god sees fit.

and the toy firefighter helmets. and the rosaries. and the flags, messages written out in the white stripes.

and we took the subway. had to master the tricky way of swiping the card and pushing through the turnstile. and we were bumping along the whole way to central park. walking along the park’s borders. and all of the dirty smelly horses, thinking to myself “how can anyone really enjoy horses? they stink like shit…”

and there was dinner at one place and drinks at another before it was time to ride and walk our feet off, back to lower manhatten, past very many things, but the focus on speed and not seeing things, because the garage is closing in 15 minutes, and jeff runs and get the car, and off of my feet, pushing jackets and bags into place to settle a spot to lay down in the back end, falling asleep under the headlight beams through the back window.

-

and if that wasn’t boring, surely the extraction of #8 and the apico on #7 was. the stinging intense pain of the novacaine needle, stabbing again and again, that was definitely the worst, though not nearly as disturbing as the large pliers, grasping and wrenching tim’s poor skull by it’s poor doomed tooth. and so starting today i have a flipper tooth and bleeding stitched wounds in my mouth and a new fondness for pudding and jello.

and also, i’m almost ready to write simple songs, something to remember me by.

until then, i will be boring and uneventful, almost or yes just about completely invisible.

“she seems distant now” he says, “and i have to tightrope-walk, balance carefully between being far away and smothering.” and i say i say i think of something to say “yes” i say “if the chemistry’s right it’ll all equalize again” i said i said “but” i said “but if the chemistry isn’t then it will crash and burn and i suggest you jump and i suggest you do not force points and do not force north to north or south to south or eastbound future to westbound future”

the demobilization of this human functionality.
the heaps of missed translations, i was in a pit
the hormones and silence, the digestive system
the darwinism the survival of you
and how i scrape along the ground
handicapped with outdated fairytale idealism
and if firey eyes ever/]]
but firey eyes ever blind to flames[
would they see a sun {?}

;was waking up after eons,
a product of my unfinished children.
the forever unresolved-
the insatiable chaos – the boy
who skipped the growing
and only got old.