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Ailinn
Windchimer
2173 Posts |
 Posted - 04/05/2008 : 16:54:52
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| She was a crash and burn personality. He knew that before he cast her in the role. Before he ever put his arms around her. On the first day of principal photography he shot her through the veil. The hat with the spray of spots he insisted she wear. She took direction well. Punctuated each line with a jab of an ebony cigarette holder. Her face diffused behind a hazy scrim of smoke. "More noir!" he insisted, famous for the truth. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2173 Posts |
Posted - 04/05/2008 : 17:01:18
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| They were sleeping on the desert. Waiting for a break in the weather. The runway was too short and the trees grew in the way. Two feet taller than last month. Two feet taller from a sudden surge of rain. He shrugged his fate-burdened shoulders. "No accident, Lady," he said, "so lay your destined bones down beside mine." He patted the nettled blanket. The fugue of words he gave her were variations on a theme. The star-pierced sky. The tangled leaves. Hands pinned up on a branch waving through a curtain of green mesquite. "...and tomorrow..." he whispered, "...if there is one..." |
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2820 Posts |
Posted - 04/05/2008 : 19:42:52
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{applause}
~*~~*~~*~ |
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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5446 Posts |
Posted - 04/06/2008 : 00:18:52
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THE SUMMER DAY
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver |
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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5446 Posts |
Posted - 04/06/2008 : 00:33:22
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He's been sitting out there an hour each night
rolling cigarettes and smoking them.
He took his time rolling each one of them
and he took his time smoking them.
The thin white paper pinched against
his crack-skin finger with his thumb while
the other hand lifted the tobacco
from the open tin balanced on his thigh.
The rustle of the rolling, the quick lick,
roll and the seal. Wooden match striking
the wood of the chair, fire lifted to his mouth,
first slow draw, his loud heart quickening.
She left a blouse on a hook behind his door.
White, with no shoulders to give it shape now,
no waist for its tails to gather inside.
He would touch it sometimes, as if her body
might by magic reappear inside it, come back
like water to a man lost in rattlesnake country.
He thought about her out on the porch there,
the wanting, how cigarette smoke softens it,
the way his hands remembered textures,
how far it is 'til morning.
DL
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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5446 Posts |
Posted - 04/06/2008 : 18:15:35
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I'll echo what Ailinn said. It's good to
come here and warm my hands by the fire. |
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BarbraG
Windchimer
1824 Posts |
Posted - 04/06/2008 : 22:08:14
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" the way his hands remembered textures,
how far it is 'til morning"
Someday, when we meet, Doug, I am going to ask you a question.
BGee |
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BarbraG
Windchimer
1824 Posts |
Posted - 04/11/2008 : 21:15:03
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She walked away from me while I was still talking to her.
"I love you" was just about to fall on her ears, and she
saw it coming. I knew she wasn't ready, but the words and
feelings had been welling up inside me for so long now. I had
to tell her. I felt like the sky would fall if I didn't.
Catching up to her, I touched her shoulders gently and turned
her around, looking into the bluest eyes in the world.
"Don't say it," she pleaded. "I'm just not ready, not yet."
"Well, my sweetheart, I feel that I must. I need to tell you
that I love you, and I have loved you for a very long time. Just
in case you are never ready to hear it or even feel it, I can
walk away knowing that ... you know." And, I did.
BGee
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2820 Posts |
Posted - 04/16/2008 : 15:39:11
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It must have been the summer of 1971, because I was still nineteen. Working
the 6 pm to 6 am shift at Bud's Taxi in Nyack. 12 hours on, twelve hours
off, seven days a week. It was great if you were young and didn't need to
sleep. I'd get off at dawn and walk down to the new luxury apartments on the
Hudson and sleep a few hours on a waterbed with one of the crazy girls I
hung out with in those days.
One nite, about 2 am, the Red and Tan bus from New York pulled up and They
got off. A drunk blond and a skinny guy with a big afro. The other driver
was on his way to the airport so it was all me. They wanted to go to the
black "resort" up on the mountain outside of town. [We used to go there when
we were fourteen to get rum drinks because the only thing that mattered to
Valentine, the bartender, was the color of your money, not your skin or age.
He'd give us 151 Bacardi and make us fried chicken and became a lifleong
friend until his liver caught up with him back in the Eighties] The guy
growled at me to wait until he was sure they could get a room and I noticed
that he seemed to have a pretty good hold on her arm, but just figured it
was to keep her on her feet. A few minutes later, the blonde comes out of
the door fast and jumps in the front seat and tells me to get us both out of
there as fast as I could. I hit reverse, hit drive and didn't stop until I
got to the taxi office.
I think I was probably disappointed that all I got was a kiss on the cheek
and a "knight in shining armor" comment, but I was pretty sped up at that
time of the morning so I took events as they developed and the kiss put me
up on the nite. She never told me what happened in there or what the story
was or much else except to watch out for myself for a good while and she got
on the next bus heading back to the City.....
I sat at the dispatcher's desk in front of the big glass window with the
door locked, feeling like a target, praying for the first time in a long
time, hoping Mikey got back before trouble did... Every time some drunk
walked by the window I jumped, until I saw the sun hit the top of the movie
theater across the street.
When 6 am came, I cashed out with Bud's wife and headed for my space on the
waterbed without saying a word to anybody. What the Hell was I gonna tell
them? Heck, I didn't know what happened myself and I was there. I figured
maybe it was a good time to go back to San Francisco, and later that day I
packed my backpack and stuck out my thumb...
Yeah, I know. I'm disappointed, too, but, then again,
Most of the time a Real story doesn't end, it just goes on.....
Hank Beukema - 2008
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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5446 Posts |
Posted - 04/17/2008 : 07:11:00
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When the saxophonist Art Pepper was in prison for possession
he got a lighter load for being able to play the alto in the
prison combo, the only white boy in the band. He could blow
fire from that burnished bell, or coo a ballad it made everyone
see some girl they dreamed about. They even let him keep his
horn in his cell and, after lights out, some of the other men
would call from their cells and say, "Take us on a trip, man,"
to him. And with the guards permission he'd lift his reed to
his mouth and begin telling them stories in melody, taking
everybody up and over the high walls, lifting them over the
barbed wire to where they could see things and imagine being
free again. "Take us one a trip, man, tell us a story." That
was how it was in there, making the years go by, day by day.
Take us on a trip, Buckman, tell us a story. You've done it
so many times before, and we thank you. |
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Jonmark
Windchimer
USA
1791 Posts |
Posted - 04/17/2008 : 18:22:46
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Yes. Thanks Hank. |
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2820 Posts |
Posted - 04/17/2008 : 20:33:32
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It was one of those nites that alot of people remembered for a long, long
time...
Holland, Michigan. January. The Sixties had been [w]rung out and the
Seventies were coming on hard. Buck was still attempting to avoid The War,
but had gotten himself, uh, forced out of college. His best friend had
sailed off a mountain in Colorado into the next life and the boy was
drifting. In more ways than one. He drifted up to Michigan to see if there
might be a place for him with his college roommate, Donny, who had moved on
from Indiana when he had left and was at a small, semi-religious school in
Holland. He had been there once as a little boy to visit their Dutch
relatives and could still remember his late uncle and him running the dunes
together. Thru a little magic and some slick moves, he had gotten a room in
one of the fraternity dorms and even an ID for the cafeteria. He spent the
days getting to know his way around the people and the area.
They picked a full moon nite to do it...
Everybody [the long haired gang] had been reading The Electric Kool Aid Acid
Test by Tom Wolfe and even though it was winter, it seemed like a good idea
at the time to have a party on the dunes. Lake Michigan had thrown jagged
mountains of ice against the shore and between the moon and the acid it was
a colorful, magical prism-land they found themselves in. By the time Buck
and the little girl with the curly red hair and the sweet round face found
their way thru the woods and down the dunes, everybody was way ahead of
them. Donny was way over into lalaland and most of the others were heading
that way, so the two of them just kind of smoked and tried to keep the
campfires going. The tall girl from Long Island came running over to them at
about 2 AM and said that Donny wasn't going to make his radio show at 3. The
two of them had been having alot of fun at the radio station, picking out
records, experimenting with playing two records at once over the air and
trying to learn what this medium that they all grew up on was all about.
Susie suggested that Buck could go back to the campus and do the show. He
told her that he had dropped a tab and that he didn't think he could do it.
She told him that she'd be there and it would be fine, besides nobody's
listening but our crowd with their little transistors and it would be a
kick.
Everything went fine til she went to the bathroom and left him alone and the
stuff kicked in just as the Pink Floyd record was nearing the end. Seems
like it was that one with the birds chirping forever on the last cut. Buck
had turned the mike on already when he heard the birds. Never having heard
the record and being, um, just a little out where the sidewalks don't run,
he started yelling - Where are those birds, where are those f**king birds -
over and over again, out over the frigid air of Michigan. When Susie came
back and calmed him down, she thought since it was dawn that it would be a
good idea to play that new record of the Star Spangled Banner by Jimi. She
didn't know that the school had warned all the dj's not to play it because
they thought it was "sacriligious and dangerous," [Things were a little
"different" then] and yes, the mike was Still on...
Well, folkies, this is another little tale that ends with our hero sticking
his sack on his back and his thumb back in the air...
But, Hell, Holland remembered him and that nite for a long, long time...
Hank |
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andrew p
Firefly
USA
3936 Posts |
Posted - 04/18/2008 : 07:00:38
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been there...done that...flashback often!!! LOL
take a trip and never even leave the farm.
andrew
Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music. ~John Milton
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Roy
Firefly
USA
2627 Posts |
Posted - 04/18/2008 : 21:18:56
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It was the spring of 1993, driving to work I looked up and saw a blimp...painted in crazy colors and looking like a pig from the rear...this was nothing from Goodyear or Snoopy...there just wasn't a lot of blimps working that year. This flying pig swooped low over highway 287 in Arlington and as it turned again I read "Pink Floyd" on the side...Pigs can fly!
Later that morning I learned that the band was going to appear at Texas Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys, in June. Tickets were to go on sale in a couple of weeks.
As ticket time rolled around, my son and his buddies made plans to camp out at the ticket agency in order to have a crack at good seats.
I couldn't imagine that they could produce decent sound or lights in a venue that big, but I gave the kid a hundred dollar bill and told him to count me in on the tickets. Around ten the next morning my phone rang with the news of two front row center tickets were in hand for me and my lady.
The day of the concert I had searched for something a little stronger than Willie Weed to help me enjoy the show...my acid days were behind me, "X" was nowhere to be found, so we truged off to Irving resigned to have a toke or two and kick back. Was I ever wrong. The front row was a magic place...mushrooms were passed back and forth...joints were everywhere...I was in fine shape when the first notes were played and the lazers made strange patterns across the sky...the sound was fantastic...the clocks ticking, the cash register ringing, the stage lights flashing and rolling over and over, then from the center of the football field rose a huge mirrored ball, it must have been fifty feet across...the lazer lights hit it and millions of lights went turning across the venue...then it slowed and reversed and my head, along with every other head in the place went with it.
Then it ended...two hours and ten minutes of some of the best music ever...the best light show ever...the best high ever! The crowd stood and cheered for 30 minutes...but no David Gilmore was to return, it was done...never to come again...
I now have the experience to relate to my grandkids...that this old man saw Pink Floyd the last time they toured...and loved it. Am I cool or what? |
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BarbraG
Windchimer
1824 Posts |
Posted - 04/18/2008 : 22:33:53
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You're cool, Roy !! You're cool !! However, I would have had to
be totally "out" to "enjoy" the "organized noise". Now, the light
show might have been a horse of a different . . .
BGee |
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aussiedave
Swinger
Australia
509 Posts |
Posted - 04/19/2008 : 02:58:03
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his unconditional love
for her
made it easier
for her
to love him conditionally
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2173 Posts |
Posted - 04/20/2008 : 17:58:23
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| "I used to snitch his cigarettes," Robber says, (Chloe's great-granddaughter, Roberta Barron, permanent part-time caregiver at Sunrise Retirement now.) "Yep. Three or four times week. I remember the day Granny switched him to Spuds..." (Robber sticks her fingers down her throat and gags.) 'Like smokin' a Mae West,' Grampa said when he stopped at the newsstand by the train station and picked up a pack of Lucky Strikes. 'Hold on to these for me, girl,' he said later, and from that day on I couldn't steal from him. I got caught with them cigs in my backpack once. Said I found them on the counter at Laundrorama. Double trouble. Laundrorama wasn't allowed 'cause some guys used to drag the folding chairs together and sleep in the street window while their camouflage clothes got clean. 'Vets catchin' some z's,' Grampa told me, 'no big deal.' Later, we'd sit on the bench at the edge of the park with a brown paper sack full of peanuts in the shell. How those squirrels chattered and performed for him! He had names for the regulars based on their 'personalities'. George Jones and Al Capone and Pocahontas, I remember. Groucho Marx and Miss Scarlett NoHaira. Roaring engines on the other side of Iron Aisle. The racket and perpetual motion he loved. The hustle and bustle as the crowds rushed to catch the Express." |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2173 Posts |
Posted - 04/20/2008 : 18:05:29
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| His mouth of invention invented a house so high there were clouds outside the windows. Glitter-bright air and a small copse of trees leaning perilously over an ocean. Rock-rooted and enduring the perpetual wind. He placed an aquarelle view in the kitchen window and a sun-blistered sill to rest their elbows on. He carpentered the sideboard and refectory table. Hung copper kettles from the cross-beams to catch each season's contagious candlelight. He secured the rope hammock between two eucalyptus and on hot nights he interpreted the sky. Then the dream ran ahead of them, laughing and alive, turning back now and then to wave over resolute shoulders. |
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Joe Z
Windchimer
USA
1819 Posts |
Posted - 04/20/2008 : 18:08:44
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| I believe it's time to re-sing Alice's Restaurant Massacree in four-part harmony... |
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andrew p
Firefly
USA
3936 Posts |
Posted - 04/20/2008 : 20:45:06
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gee whiz Mr Joe...all 18 minutes & 20 seconds?
well...alrighty then!
andrew
Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music. ~John Milton
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The Nightly Vigil