like toenail clippings from the sea

I found her seashells, the shells from Cozumel in the drawer today while I was cleaning: they are part of a future that won’t exist, a shared past that was lived and their collection was predicated on a history that won’t be made, on an idea that is dead. Because they were gathered in a time where something was alive they were part of that life and intended to be used to further that life but that life is dead, has died, so now they are nothing but calcium. They are stones gathered by a girl a long time ago for some purpose that no longer exists. They are a strange thing in a desk drawer that must probably be thrown in a dumpster: these things each one selected over another, each one chosen, each one part of the greater plan. Look at the table: before it was bought to suit a life, to be service to a life that is dead now. So it is just wood. It is an object. The life that was injected into it has been removed. It is hard to say if the table is dead. Does it still possess the memory of its life of service? Are the imprints part of the finish? The faith that we had in the table, the way we saw it, the people who touched it will never be together again; the table will no longer be in the same sight. It is now consigned to wait, to see if it will live again in service to another life. The shells have less life than furniture. They have no use to anyone anymore where the table may live again. The shells were a personal choice, each one selected specifically, each one embraced into a life that no longer exists. They are less than orphans now.

sweet basil spice with purple walls, blue ceiling and gold bodhisaatva

While we were there — no, as we walked in, I saw a man I see quite often in the neighborhood. Everything is the same about him: always a jacket and jeans, always the haircut. He is always alone. Tonight he was eating alone without even a book. What do you do? I have done it and had to stare out the window or at the wall to avoid staring at people. I see this man in the same cafe every morning, and I only know this because of all the mornings I have spent in this cafe. I saw him once become confused and agitated when he arrived and a woman was sitting at his usual table. He was visibly uncomfortable as he set up his computer at the table beside it. Only once have I seen him converse with someone and in the course of it he complained about another man I know, saying that he didn’t know why this man was so popular at the open mic nights at this same cafe. He didn’t like that this other man was so well liked because he didn’t see that he had any talent at all. He promised to come to a new open mic and bring his guitar. Then he was alone again when the man he spoke with was gone. Tonight he ate alone, left alone. After we ate we left for gelato and as we walked past the restaurant later to collect the car I saw another man I know, someone I knew well years ago sitting with his new girlfriend, who I also know, though from very different circumstances. They were holding hands and he was explaining something and the look on her face betrayed her contempt, her utter disbelief that she could sit there with him and entertain some notion that they were about to eat bad food together in a cobbled-together restaurant. It was though she couldn’t believe he was talking at all, much less care about what he was saying. He was wearing the same clothes I saw him wear a decade ago. It is always like that in this city. Wherever I go I see the past.

patrick henry college

It is very real and produces real people in real positions, like Regent Law and homeschoolers and the rest do: I do not know if these Jubilee and Gateway and etc. and so on churches produce the same kind of people. I doubt it. Patrick Henry graduates go on to the capital because the members of their faith, of their brands of theocratic christianity (the punk ass middle children of abraham) are mobilized and believe they are fighting the actual forces of evil: that is not the laugh, because we all know evil is real, but we know at the same time that these people are horribly confused. I wish I knew sources of evil so I could avoid them. Let’s list some:

laziness. short-term thinking. self-righteousness. impatience. desire.

often, I cannot sleep or do not sleep restfully

I do not know if it is my doing but I suspect it is, I suspect it is me: I have nightmares about — the other week was about the end of the world, again, and I saw [name] sitting on a box outside a garage across the street and I was reading the paper about the market crash and how it might be the big one and I waved and walked over and said this is it, isn’t it? it’s happening today. and [name] said yep, this is it — selling the car right now for some flight money. heading to the airport next, taking the family and getting the fuck out of here — it’s going to get bad and he was smiling and I was smiling and already there was trash on the street and he was sitting on a bucket and I thought my god this is the day when everything changes (I can remember this dream so clearly, the quality of the air and the the light; it was probably just eleven in the morning) and the next I knew my job was over, of course, and so was everyone else’s in the neighborhood and people were screaming after a couple days because we all knew this was it, that there was no coming back from this one any time soon, that the kids who grew up in this would know a different America (finally!) from the one we knew. [name] had gotten his five grand and gotten out. I was living in a house, a bigger house further into the city with about fifteen other people and we had a pretty good community; kept cooking, kept clean, kept the lights out at night and generally stayed unnoticed, which at this (relatively) early stage was a good thing. A few months in and people were taking drastic measures; the law had been gone for months, but the illusion had vanished completely only in the last few weeks. We didn’t pretend anymore. We stayed honest, but we knew the people outside were beyond trust because they had fallen into survivalism, were without food, were still trying to support families. You couldn’t do this anymore, really, not without joining a bigger group. Anyway we had to stay low at night because men were on the hunt and would invade your home for food — getting robbed on the street was a threat, sure, but being out was no plan because you’d just lead someone right back to your house, and even if (like us) you had about fifteen strong guys to put up a fight the noise would let everyone else know you had something worth stealing, worth fighting to protect — the name of survival was anonymity and we had to keep it, keep it nondescript. At the time I woke up we were interviewing a potential roommate. We all liked him, but it didn’t seem likely he could bring in much food. As I woke up I remembered that the person in question was me.