[Previous entry: "The Frost Has Been Burned Off This Author's Weathered Heart"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "A Cup of Determination in a Metric Ton of Doubt"]

05/01/2007: "Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt."

Greetings from a desk.

As the month of April stumbles off into the past like a lovesick wino trying to recall the name of a grade-school crush and tie his bike-chain-belt at the same time, I've been trying my hardest to keep myself immersed in work to plug up whatever holes have been worn into the lobes of my noggin by depressions past and present.

Tonight, between the ingestion of a particulary potent bottle of bottom-shelf liquor and a half-crazed late-night Heath Bar run, I came up with another page for Love is a Drowsy, Retarded Turtle, the children's book I've been writing on-and-off for a couple years:


Chestnut's voice mumbles through the walls at this late hour, preparing for a trip to the Altoona office tomorrow morning. I can barely make out a muffled "Onde está o café o mais próximo?" (Chestnut downloaded Portuguese lessons to his iPod in order to impress a Brazillian toll collector he remembers from six months ago).
From the other wall, the muted dual guitars of Thin Lizzy's Cowboy Song wrap themselves around my roommate's warbled yell-singing as Tumble, fresh off a telephone call where his sister advised him to grow up and "get a real job," has holed himself in his room sipping single-malt scotch and designing a treehouse.

It's been three weeks almost since we lost a man who helped me understand the world better than my own two eyes could ever do alone. And tonight I still don't very much feel like writing. I feel like sitting at my desk, drawing assholes in marker or painting unwavering bands of light, anything to compensate for the closing of one great, great man's portal somewhere over Manhattan.

So I think I'll sign off here and hope that someone somewhere understands the world like no one else ever has and is at this moment putting pen to paper to let us in on it.



-F