An emergency prompted I sit in a lawn chair on the Gulf of Mexico with my family this weekend, slathering layers of pink pigment from the Sun’s demand on to my shoulders and chest. I wore a shirt in four days the same amount I stood under the shower faucet — once total, to the agreement of my self and my what would seem the inner interlocution concerning my life’s direction, which is not as large and complex as I once thought it to be.

Ask a year ago — or to another extreme — two years ago, what I ought to be doing with my life, and surely some insecure pretense would say “I know exactly what!” though no actions embodied seem to provide a paralell verdict. Of course, much of that’s been discussed here and rather than repeating motions of awareness I only wish to build upon them and show some forward movement.

My family continues to be a strong source of scaffolding for my existence — not only a reassurance of who I am, but moreover a reinforcement of who I ought to be. My sister especially, for in our adult years all the shared experiences of she and I with our parents, whom I love deeply and understand more and more deeply that who I am is because of who they consistently have been for no less than some two decades and more than a half, her understanding of unintelligibly long sentences if this is an example.

I love them much that I find more and more my placement here is a man of Family — a man who understands his household is what best embodies who humans in general ought to be: the mutual selflessness, giving, benevolence, and well, ability to laugh at each other.  And with burned shoulders and the curliest hair my mother framed on my face and the dimpled grin my father placed in my cheekbones, I’m sitting in bed, back in Dallas, hoping for so much, after years of what seems like missing out on it all.

Some things from this weekend have stayed, where as some were meant to stay with the weekend. And specifically how it ought to apply in my life. What ismost valuable?

I’ve spent the better part of the last decade resolving I was a single man, fit for the work of the Kingdom and what extra time singleness allows for study and for service. I searched deep and wide for whether or not it was that precise calling or my own anti-calling (that of selfishness and to control my own time, effort, and finances). I’m coming closer to the understanding that it’s indeed not the former.

These newfound (though not sudden) discoveries have also shed intense light on how I ought to live. I told my parents only a few months ago (on their extravagant back porch, somewhere aloof my memories of that very same space growing up though it occupies the same; lawnmower sounds and allergy attacks), that the next roommate I have will be my wife, to further solidify earlier statements.

Probably the best thing I have done in years is move in to this house — Maté — benefiting from and hopefully benefiting others by sharing this communal space to musicians, scribes, searchers, the depressed, the most burnt and bitter to the most reverent and rejoicing. If ever I have grown socially in such a compressed amount of time, it’s surely these past six month. And even after a few months living here I might have had the thought, “I am never living alone again.”

After all, I am quick to say things far too soon.

Tonight I spent a drive to Whole Foods in Lakewood, an equal distance from both Ellsworth and from Vickery as is Maté, and purchased a plot of goods I might dine on the steps of either/and. I had accumulated much in my silence on the beach this weekend, and when I returned to Dallas proper after the four days away, I wanted nothing more than to revisit past nights of unpacking I have hardly known but one night a week or less since moving here.

In so doing, I lead west up Abrams to Richmond, took a left and went on through Skillman, making a left at Matilda. A few minutes later I was at the stoop of Vickery in which so much clarification internally was reached about my time in New York — so much was spent with one I love — and so much searching was exercised in light of, well, what seemed to be the entire world staring. I sat with an Avery Seventeen and looked to You, great God, and thought how I had missed trusting you like I once did, and that thankful that I am now again learning more sincerely and truly than ever.

I spent a good thirty on those steps, before I knew the next stop was ultimately to take a right from Mockingbird and on down to the Williamson trail-mast swingsets. I didn’t swing, though at those picnic tables we know I sat and stared at the inertia above the gravel pit, the question “why would you tell me that?” & a smile I have not felt as genuinely since.

Baileys and a Christmas kiss, sticky on the lips, ether in the mass; either in a mask. Ink spun from the sinew and marrow, deep from the blood that pulses to the toes and back. Rehearsals to be shared. Memories to redeem, to dream, the memories to create; create to memorize.

Lick the bubble-gum seal and stick it to the back, wax stamp, and send to Surrey.

“Text Edit.”

There.

It is Christmas Eve here in Dallas. In some places it is Christmas Day – the places across the Atlantic. I can imagine (I haven’t had a TV in years) each network news channel in the majority of living rooms tuned into Santa’s Route, tracing his trajectory from the North Pole to Norway, Holland, to Ireland, England, all across Europe. Into China, India, a long stop on the coasts of Australia, on to the South Pacific, and then for the long flight in a sled to the Americas (another form of ethnocentrism, as if us here are the grand finalé).

The anticipation is growing. The cheeks of children in the culture who trusts in the image of Santa grow warm and red, and mothers are making Snickerdoodles for him to feast just after his descent down the chimney chute.

My 25th Christmas looks quite different from that for obvious reasons, not limited the lack of innocence achieved not only from the realization that the idea of Santa is an idea more about benevolence and giving than it is a literal character who spends the majority of his life in the North Pole.

The lack of innocence is greater. And with the removal of innocence and the illiumination of reality — which ever place on the spectrum we can speak of — comes a great responsibility. Some shock. Some discouragement. But ultimately with it comes responsibility. And a greater regard for those who are not pawns in our own game. With innocence pride is more easily practiced in its forms. With the removal of innocence and the revelation of things greater comes the necessity to practice life (the ethic of Love) in as nuanced a way as reality is becoming.

My Christmas Eve 2009 is markedly different than all before for a number of reasons. With it comes a kind of great loss. The loss of not only the idea of something possible but the loss of a person with whom ideas and those related were shared.

With it comes me sitting in the dining room of an apartment which, in my mind, I have not been a resident for nearly six months. A courageous wind rattles my windows, and the sleet we in Texas tend to call snow out of optimism and hope spackles and pounds the panes, dripping as quickly as it melts into an icy slush on the sills.

With it comes me clumsily searching my computer directories for the program called Text Edit, which would allow me to put to flesh ideas which are circling in my head and not completely formed so that what is necessary to put down in black characters on the white canvas becomes what will allow me to remember the experience, and eventually to rehearse it.

My trips to Colorado with my family near the Christmas climax have become for me not only a time to share thoughts, memories, and our total selves together outside the context of work which usually prevents it, but it has also become for me a gauge on the particular growth I’ve experienced as a person. It is the only tradition left, from what I can tell, that remains solid and necessary for my family, and therefore I attach a giant significance to it.

I was in Colorado only one day ago for this very trip. At 4am yesterday my family and I rose (prematurely, I’ll add) to come home. Not once has Dallas felt like that. When I was overcome suddenly in the early hours of the day to be Home — meaning Dallas — I welcomed what sort of new reality this was for me. For the first time I was not imagining myself in some future that, to have been made possible, was in a different location geographically. Of course there are things to expect and to hope for in Dallas that excited me — living in a house with friends, becoming increasingly connected to and meaningful from within the community, and the possibility to, with what I’ve been given, participate in the redemption of parts (and eventually the whole) of culture.

Even with that, I was surprised by this new experience of actually being drawn to Dallas. To take advantage of my life here in a way that could actually make a difference in the lives of others. To focus less on what my travels would take me from and more on where my committment would lead to me unto.

Make sure you run from something
And not away from

It burned my ears in September when I bought my plane ticket to Queens, NY for December 1. And it is still easily as meaningful.

It is this very thing, and by the power of the relationships I share with people I consider to be some of my closest friends and sharers of contextual experience that has stopped me from moving to New York City after years of planning to do so. It is this very thing which formed a giant hole in me for any of the things I’ve been planning that have fit into that kind of plan.

So with Christmas Eve I know that what has been lost will eventually be revealed in the way other things have been found. This is what Advent is about, is it not? And the hope is, of course, that what comes forth on Christmas Day is the very reality through which redemption comes, is made available to us as humans, and allows us to share and to give, and to redeem ourselves what has been broken. The power is not ours — but may we be agents. And may we plead to be.

I am sure I have little idea of how to fill that role.

These words have never meant as much
As they now mean to me.

And sure, Fall is a one. That isn’t what is meant. It is much greater than college peacoats and pipes – it is one which transcends the annual Cycle – one no greater than language for those within it to better understand themselves and the ones to whom they have been given.

I have lived in this space over a year and a half, and, in many ways I am a different person than the one who moved in, eating eggs on a bun and peanut butter from a spoon. But perhaps I am equally the same and different (and more and/or less of each) as when I moved in, full of some vision and in some worldview which this place accompanied or resourced.

I have dealt with addiction, with deep dependence, with awful depression, with considerable despair, with alienation, with a loneliness I thought I would only read about in poems. But also I have known real sharing, with an extent of beauty I had not yet, if by the common revelation of those with whom I share it.

Oh! And then I have been low and dark and terrible and insane and I have been high and I have experienced balance and things have at times seen perfection (if at least a compression of it), and so given is the ability to compare and contrast and, most importantly, to synthesize. And John calls. Trae’s hello. And each of Us collect on the rooftop; the treehouse.

And it is what it is as a human, to be, and to be within a certain framework in which some things are and will be chaotic (but perhaps not forever), and in which some things are characterized by order and sense, and that the two are not as much in a tennis match as they are taking a stroll together in the local Farmer’s Market.

I search for a house. A house to be shared by many, whether that mean only roommates or that mean also the gatherings and the music and the finest ale and thoughts on humanity and human thoughts and porches where those exchanges and experiences might be shared.

I am, I know, more myself than I have ever been, and yet I am less myself than I have ever been, and I can only think that this next step unto will be another step into the discovery these antitheses when synthesized yields.

Who knows when my thoughts on church will coagulate, or if they ever will. And what Ever means. And whatever Means. And this process is what is most important to my being-in-belonging/becoming. Here I am, & I am here. And now. And now I am here. And always there are Cards, and you’re wanting to best play them as they’re dealt.

My lease ends at the end of November, and what has been the Thing my life for years was planned (New York or rather Place Other) I have begun to see and to realize what I would like for my life to move towards — a deeper understanding of Home, of Belief, of Sharing, of Mutualism, in which value for the greater things exceeds the smaller ambition within which only lend to betterment of self.  There is again a hierarchy of priority, and I am thankful it does and hopeful it will exceed my self at all times and in all places.

If my self could die! I would want a singular understanding of reality to be redeemed into what is Whole and Greater, and I would want what has been lost in my own desires for career and/or for comfort to be displaced forever and yet replaced by what makes each of us better — Each Other.

There are definitions of home. And there are ways to rehearse.

When the task was complete, the only thing between me and my exit was the need for the trenchcoat which hung in the closet across the room, still knowing both it wasn’t really cold enough for this heavy a coat but — with priorities in view — that there is no other piece of clothing that would pair so amicably with my demeanor.

I flung the coat off its hanger, swung it around by the collar to my back and slid in carefully each of my arms. I began to fasten the buttons which ran a vertical line down the center of my body, beginning at my chest and descending to a far point below my waist. [It's my preference that the collar button of any jacket must always be fastened despite whatever fashion advice, for I adore the comforting sensation of cloth fastened tightly to the flesh of my neck.]

For good measure, I raised the collar like one might in the misty, indigo streets of a Film Noir, and felt the edges of the cloth play with the bristles on my jaw.

Now fully clothed in my winter true, I set out through the front doors of the house, contemplating how no more than year ago I thought I’ll never last here. I passed down the dark center hallway of the antique building and carried on into the entryway, a place with walls and walls of mailboxes. Unable to recognize most of the names above each one, I’m reminded of the transience of neighbors in the city and resolve — this is okay.

+

In the fall, when I had more nights like this one, I spent the greater majority of my time with Robert Frost or William Carlos Williams (or even Ted Hughes if I’m feeling a bit more stolid and staunch) alongside a Russian Imperial stout, but tonight wouldn’t be one of them. I headed on down the street whose only sound was the bzzzzz of my next-door-neighbor’s front porch insect killer and the clicking of my heels across the pavement.

Daylight Savings Time still has not arrived, though the sun had been staying up later than when deeper in the Winter months. I still much prefer the dark closer to lunch than to bed, especially if it leaves more occasion for these sorts of evenings.

I snapped my bookbag across my chest, not for support but rather for the snug sensation across my chest, and walked on down the block on towards Greenville Avenue. Taking a right in the alleyway just before I reach the famous, elderly street, I curve on the path towards the Dubliner. In late fall, the Dubliner had become my Monday evening office, first because its happy hour extends until closing time and for another it is typically fairly empty the night after the weekend’s death.

+

A split of the Celtic stained-glass doors in in the pub front, a wave at that guy I’d met last summer when the Rangers lost to the Yankees, and a right across the cigarette stained hardwood floors, I carried on down the railroad-car room.

There’s a certain station I call my own. It’s highly likely this spot will always be vacant, mostly because it’s the most dimly lit corner of all and I am drawn to all ilks of dim corners, not least for the way it allows one to observe all the surrounding activity, but also because the space is amenable to thought and to uninterrupted focus, should it be needed [which it usually is].

I unfastened my bookbag from my shoulders and chest, and lay it gently across the the small table which stood proudly in the Eire tradition. Unwrapping my coat is more a task than originally wrapping it, since the newness of the thing has tarnished a bit. But the process must be initiated sometime, especially since it’s no less than 60º out and even warmer in.

Detaching one at a time each of the large, black buttons in a vertical line down my body, I begin again with the chest and descend towards the bottom loop which sits hangs below my waist. And as I always do, I pulled off the coat from first my left arm and last my right, gripping the collar material between my forefinger and thumb. Swinging it around with less imagination or vigor or mystique than before, I lay it over the back of my chair, imagining it to be the fragile shoulders of my delicate wife.

And before the inauguration of a the finest tap-drawn Brooklyn Lager in the city and the text editor on my computer, only three important things were missing outside these two.

“What to type! The world is before me.” I thought it to myself.

I reasoned to let my fingers begin, knowing that my mind would follow [It's another thing to believe it actually works in that order.] I entered a “+” as a title, knowing the content of the thing should precede the naming of the thing.

I began in on my thoughts on this first day after Lent, this third day after the Great Sabbath, and this thirteenth day past my return from planning some future.

Another one day of shooting tomorrow, followed by a much-necessary retreat on the woodened patio of the parents, circling an iron firepit.  An old-fashioned sleepover and shabbat, and He saw that it was Good.

Returning to my summers’ prior running discipline, I spend an hour a day just above the sleepest slope I know in Dallas — a concrete path equal in height to the top of the deepest forest I know in Dallas.

It’s a network of sunset-lit trails and paths leading to places yet unseen. There’s nothing esoteric about any of this writing.  I’ve just recently discovered this area after a multiplicity of years jogging and an occasional karoking on the concrete-laid-way above.  And now after only few hours exploring earlier and photographing a band later this afternoon has, well, increased the curiosity to a summit.

White Rock is a place I connect with solitude and with silence, and yet! in the past year it has transformed into something much richer as shared.  What is this year, wonder what next year will, well, see. But a docklay never lets down, it continues to be confirmed.

To have experienced these aspects of the season’s change in the same space as the year prior is something of a novelty for me personally. That I ought to live in the same apartment or house or brownstone or whatever type space (I’ve seen an assortment) long enough to see a second spring? This is unprecedented. Of course this excludes my childhood home, because I was basically without volition to live there. (Which isn’t to say I didn’t want to be there.)  Anyways, that only reinforces of what I’m hoping to compress in words here.

Among the many moves made over the past seven years since my high school graduation, Vickery’s has to have been the most significant on a variety of levels — most of those mentioned here in previous forms — but the most important among all reasons is that I am here a second Spring.  The most important is that I am Here. Embracing the truth that Now / here ≠ No-where.

Chalk it up to portability and a capacity for change in environment to affects perception and focus [if, if, if you must], but I prefer to imagine this is a mysterious chunk of aluminum that has built into its very nature portions of my person. That it understands precisely what I need in order to invent or rather incarnate, and implements it without much asking doing.  That’s so far what it seems.

The timing of it and the pace at which it’s moved me through a number of projects work-wise and otherwise is wholly good, considering the past month I feel like I’ve been trying so hard to get my nose past the proverbial surface and take in some air, but there have been a few cannonballs tied to my ankle which have recently been loosed my ankle (no bruising either!) and I’m finally back somewhere near the equilibrium.

It’s raining horrendously or perhaps torrentiously! here in the badlands of Dallas, and so each of us all is under our rooftops sipping tea-spots and espressos-marked-with-foam from ceramic demitasses, listening to Norse books-on-tape or The Brothers Grimm simpler though dark still, or Finnish fanciness — what have you?

Though when I think of it, the space outside my window looks as if it could be set among the moors of Northern Ireland but possibly it’s a glimpse into the Third Age? Maybe my mind is a bit busy when I sit in front of the computer all day, and although my running plans were foiled, I don’t mind looking at this for a little bit more {courtesy iPhone, which looks like it accidentally cross-processed the image in a momentary miracle}:

Soundtrack .:. Sigur Rós & Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson — Ó›in’s Raven Magic

After deciding I won’t work much today, I walk slowly into the kitchen to boil the water for a Press of Columbian and hope that my sleep-in contacts — which crunch with every blink — will find some moisture very soonish.

On the way through the living room catch two squirrels co-gnawing an acorn on the windowsill near my desk. Spooked by soft-steps, they scatter and disappear into the remainder of Fall’s leaves, which decay and transmute into compost.  Spring is near, the skies are a silent Grey, and my being is a maze.

ht: Amos Lanka

We set off for Arkadelphia, and upon arrival [this is true] I nearly cried result of the weighty meaning of the place.  I showed girl all the spots, not limited to the center for students, my old dorms, and the place I learned to play piano and some Koine and also how to brew the proper cup of coffee from a certain Old Testament professor.  All these things were harder to spit out, going on three years removed from a place I selfishly wanted to avoid all until my senior year, when I met brothers whose relationship has set quite standard for any and all-oh who follow.   Walking the campus on Saturday, I was unable to remember anything but the good of the place, which could or could not mean it outweighs the bad.

The rest of the day we spent jaunting on foot through the historic town of Hot Springs.  After the recording of a few time lapse videos during the dismissal of an Oaklawn race we made Polaroids near a giant mosaic of Jesus Christ, King of the World [as well as a mural that read $.10, under which I stood at the artistic direction of girl.  She perceives me as cheap, is it?].   Thankfully, we had no sense of Chronos while in the Hot Springs and were able to peacefully lay in a city-center lawn beneath the afternoon sun for however long, trading my eyeglasses for her sunglasses, the wind on our cheeks.  Eventually we removed the grass from our shoulders and continued our hike through the hillfull downtown, planning to double-back and find dinner in a downtown nook.

After the final Polaroid of a ten-piece roll was composed under a sign reading “LA BOHEMIA,” girl and I searched for the perfect spot [nothing less would satisfy] and finally ended up at a location known as OSAKA, which is a word difficult to say quickly three times in a row.   We sat in socks on a pad of floral pillows on the cedar woodfloor ["look beneath the floorboards"] and sampled from a Rainbow, some Dynamite, a Spider, and the Noir.  When no dinner was left, we stopped for a Black on the patio of a major coffee chain and fled the state of Arkansas, peeling back the Indigo and looking for our Dallas on the other side of Twilight.

Four and a half hours of sleep-driving later. Crooked Tree faithfully [as is she always] held my car captive until my return, and, after transferring all my items from girl’s-good-gas-mileage Sky-on, I cut through the black night to Vickery, which is where I realized I have an easier time falling asleep at the wheel than in my own bed.  Not to mention [though I will mention] my neighborhood often on the weekends sounds like a mix of a 1974 Harlem and a mid-nineties frat party [which is a bad, bad mix], and 4 am was the first my eyes shut.

Even so, mayhaps one of the best weekends I’ve ever known.  If I may use such ultimate language, of course.

To plop the locust piece
in a cherry oak tree
drawer, caulk
the cracks, make
a pie, a heron held
shingle wood and state.
You wait, why I can’t
know, dry
veiled and obscured
now clear and light, fight
to end all walls
and all the bald AWOLs.

Comptine d’un autre été, l’après-midi
Pas simplement un autre hiver crépuscule

See also:
Cupid and Pysche, or, I don’t Mean or, I Am Orual,
Compline: Sapir-Whorf or Sine Qua Non,
somewhere impossible light still shines

I slept more
a few months before
I slept a lot less
six years.  But cars
full of humans,
screams and screech-
Vickery and I am
somesmall con-
scious to hear
them head home.

[It's my Worst,
torn sinews!]

Free.  Feel-
a first
time, feel
A first verse less
like cutting
wrists to feel.  Blood
years reckoning,
bewildered in the ether form
alien, we are all.  He
is not David, He is His
greatest Son and we are All
his daughters Orual
Feeling less
like slicing,
and more if Real.

Long did I hate you. Long did I fear you. I might—

It is Advent, and Advent [in not enough words and in one sense] is a season to reflect and loose Chains [& a lot of chains bind me], and to welcome into the person Jesus Christ, King of the Earth, who rules mightily with the Father and the Holy Spirit forever. ἀμὴν ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν. ἀμὴν ἀμὴν.

Likely some of these things will come across some pungent, but it is, I think, important that they are let free to breathe a little bit. Forsurely the human exercise of confession in allowing things to become as real as Hearing makes is not one to be ignored.

During Fall of 2008, I spent a lot of my time solitudinally — coffeenooks and apartment stoops — both living and working alone for the first time, and therefore forced to face more of the gross humanity than I’ve ever.  I blame it on [thank] God’s Silence for the season — which can be counted among the most difficult and [you could insert a therefore here, since we know what the therefore's here for] most fruitful to date.   For out of it has come a better understanding of my role both vocationally and socially, and my [working] love [need] for God Triunity and Human Community has increased by not a marginal measure.

On paper the system seems to be without fault, but because I’ve employed it for upwards of seven years now, it hardly ever works.  Usually I’ll either lay for an hour with alarm sounding [it becomes unnoticeable after 5 minutes of the pattern] or I’ll rise to turn it off and immediately return to beneath my mintgreen quilt.

+

This morning after the my phone sounded its guitar jingle, I rolled over to the wall and split open my eyelids.  Some sunorange was breaking in through the gridscreen across my open window, and the air was markedlhy more gelid than it has been any other morning this Fall.  I could hear single leaves scratching rhythms across the ashpalt, performing some serious gymnastics before ultimately meeting their fate in the pile at my apartment’s backdoor.

Since moving to Vickery I’d not heard the wind fill the trees as loudly as it did this morning, though I suppose that’s because I’ve not lived here when the leaves have been so crisp. And though I know this quick weather change to not be the latest installment by that elusive phenomenon El Niño, the Chris Farley quote would not leave my mind.  I shifted my focus to breakfast, hoping a task would keep the line clear from my thoughts.

+

Walking into the kitchen, I took to the task I always do first upon waking: Turn on the stove to ’5′ beneath my treasured Bialetti™, and prepare a demitasse with a little steamed milk before adding the brewed beverage moments later.

The rate at which the espresso brews depends heavily on how frequently I deep-clean my Bialetti™.  I’ve had a few servings since I last gave it a vigorous scrub, so this morning it was taking especially long to bubble up and through the valve.

I pretend multitasking is a forté of mine, so as I waited for the brew I split open and dropped two eggs into a skillet on the neighboring burner.  The number of omelettes I’ve made in my lifetime is larger than the population of Arkansas, so the task of timing and concocting the dish seems something not too difficult.

Finishing the omelette, I flipped it, inserted some sautéed vegetables from a few mornings ago, folded it, and slid it onto a lime-green chinaplate I inherited from my uncle Mark.  Still a bit asleep but now very focused on consuming my breakfast, I tread the cold cedar floor into my living room, and decided to start up a small project promoting the sale of my iMac™.

+

The window bordering the right side of my desk stays open the majority of the time I sit here [which is actually the majority of my Time], unless it is above 95º [one must have some boundaries].  As a result, I have an opportunity to catch most of the conversations of my neighbors – the self-proclaimed Mexican Mafia – who often sip Coronas in their backyard just north of my apartment.

Setting down the omelette on the desk in front of my computer, I felt the chilly breeze on my bare shoulders. I flipped on the space heater that remains in my desk-depths, available to heat my shins during the few days when it actually grows cold in Texas.  The current through the open window brought with it a smell of cigarette from outside, which I found peculiar since it was 7:15 am, and, well, none of my neighbors smoke.

Focused on my project and almost ready to place it before the public eye, I noticed the cigarette smell becoming stronger and more pungent, as if the unidentified morning tobaccoist was approaching my window.  A bit curious, I looked around down the side of the building and saw nothing.  Suddenly, I heard some screeching noise from my kitchen immediately thereafter, and then some ferocious banging and clanging.  Violent, violent sounds!

I rushed into the kitchen to find my Bialetti™ laying down on the open flame of my stove, espresso spewing everywhere, and some of it aflame below.   I rushed to turn off the stove before anything else, trying to install some prioritization or hierarchy to my thoughts in the midst of the madness.

Having neither a fire blanket handy nor a pair of oven mitts or, well, anything that would have been helpful in this situation, I instinctively I reached down for the rug below my refrigerator door and threw it on the fire, across the side-spun espresso maker and the coffee spewing from its spout.

When the flame finally died, I took the rug into the bathroom, left it strung out arcross the side of the bathtub and returned to the kitchen and filled the Bialetti with another batch of Peruvian single-origin, determined to have my demitasse full.

I’ve lived in a small variety of building-types and social settlings, which has brought under the Lamp to the vast assortment of Context, and, which ways specifically this tends to affect persons-in-community [though it's perhaps equally the converse] — all the Hows and the Whys and the Whens. Outside of Spanish Harlem, a house named Ellsworth was one of the most interesting permutations in the line of life-settings.

Home to a strew of upper middle-class Dallas property owners, Lakewood Heights is the broader setting of Ellsworth, actually a house on the street Ellsworth Avenue. Heights is the less successful little brother to Lakewood, a famous neighborhood in Dallas where Old Money lines the streets in the form of Mercedes and brass lion statues.^{Okay, I’ve only seen one. But still.}

The demographic of Ellsworth Avenue was the most curious to me perhaps because I had no connection to the Situation of most of its people – family-growing by the throb of city-center. I hadn’t grown up in a family outside of the suburbs, and as a 23-year-old single guy there, I was definitely of the minority. Most of those families were wealthy homeowners, whereas Taylor and I moved in as a pair of twenty-something lessees, struggling each month to trust that Art would buy some bread.

Ellsworth’s make-up was largely outdoor dwellers, and for this one should blame the grand canopy of oaks above the street, and the neighborhood’s likeness to somesmall cottage in Northern England. When night’d fall, the firepits would be lit all along the street, and, insulated by St. Augustine’s thick grass, the rich laughter in all nuance from these little gatherings was preserved in a cloud of good-tidings, which traveled all the way down to the frontsteps where I silently sat.

I made a effort very often to find in these small moments of observation a thesis to their Story as a neighborhood and as individual families [and with some, as individuals]. The exercise was with purpose of ascertaining which ways people need and fit with one another, and the Shalom that makes the togetherness possible. Even when I didn’t imagine their situations realistically [surely I often didn't], it was productive to the point that I was able to Hope with them:

1. 6252: ποιmήν & ποίηmα

2. 6246

3. 6254

4. 6259

5. 6253

+

When I moved into this space called Vickery – which is a wholly different beast from Ellsworth; a bit more bustling and urban – I anticipated at least the same of neighbors here. I was looking forward to coming to know them more than I did with the ones at Ellsworth, especially considering the proximity we’d share and our similarities in lifestage. I live in an antiquated, giant house that only in recent years has been converted into eight separate one-bedroom units.

Quickly into my stay, I realized [to my Idealist's surprise] that the reason the other seven units of this old house are occupied by solo-dwellers is that they want to be solo. I’ve met a number of them, and have become fairly close to a few of them. But even to this day – five months after my move-in – I’ve still not seen two of them, knowing nothing of their presence besides the nametags above their mailboxes, and their cars, coming and going, mumbling of Michealangelo.

Marisa was one of my closest friends here. She’s since moved out, having met a man at a bar and looking back not at all since. Steven, the kickboxer, actually goes under the name Richard now, I’m assuming because it seems more suitable for one seeking lawyerhood, as he is. ^{However, when he isn’t listening to Rage Against the Machine and practicing Jujitsu on the rubber dummy in the center of his living room, he’s pacing around shirtless in the parking lot on his cellphone. I can’t help think that even nomenclature like Richard would be of assistance to his credibility?}

Another guy named Buck lives in apartment 6, directly across the hall from where I’m sitting. I haven’t the opportunity to talk with Buck much, but I do like his name, and I do imagine it to embody a great wealth of Story. The central basis of our relationship is a competition over whose electricity bill will be lower by the end of the month. ^{Marisa was once a part of said competition, and it’s her, actually, who introduced me to Buck. The month we began friendlily competing in this way, I’d erroneously set up an autopay system through my bank , not realizing I’d already somehow already paid the bill twice. Though it was bad that first month to have paid for three Texas-summer-electriticity-bills at once, I’m now still living in the credit of that slip-up. So all’s not too bad.} I am glad to say this last month I had the cheapest bill of the three of all the competitors.^{Since Marisa moved out for her lover, Buck and I decided that she was disqualified and therefore we were entitled to fine Belgian ale on her credit.}

There’s also girl named Tara who lives in the first apartment of whom we all see very little, but Buck and Marisa have filled me in on some of the details of her Vickerian sojourn. She is well-tenured here, apparently senior to us all, though no one can gather what she does during daytimes or where she is when she isn’t Here. It only took a few days into my stay back in May to find that Tara was supreme over this property, when one afternoon I chose to park Derrick alongside the building in one of the two prized parking spots there. ^{When handing me my keys, Landlord Bob said that all tenants have equal rights to all the parking spots, but apparently there are some specific wrongs that only Experience can bring to light.}

New to the house and thus ignorant to this and similar habits of the tenants already living here, I took the spot. When I returned outside hours later to drive to dinner with a friend, I found a huge posterboard under my left windshield wiper that read “DO NOT PARK IN MY SPOT, EVER! -APT 2″ Tara – APT 2 in person – had blocked in my car from behind, and I was forced to drive over some of the lawn and the curb onto Matilda just to leave.

Since that day, I’ve only seen Tara once. We were both unlocking our apartment doors, and before I could get a good look at her, she’d slipped stealthily inside. It seems that Vickery is hermitage to her same as it is to so many of the others here. It made me all the more curious of Tara, though, and so I’d hoped we could share space sometime before one of us’d moved away.

Only four nights ago, I’d gone outside to read a bit under the streetlamp, sitting on the frontsteps where I often do to Think or to return phone calls. I’d my back against the front door, as it’s a very low-traffic exit for Vickerians and thus low-risk for being slammed in the spine.

After a few moments, I heard some pounding footsteps from down the hall, growing more intense and furious as they neared. I intended to get up and move, assuming they were leading right to the other side of the door upon which I leaned, but before I could, I felt the sharp impact of the cold metal door, and it thrust me forward into the front yard into a stumble.

Tara came storming through in tears over something, and, after regaining my balance, I quickly apologized for my poor choice of Seat. She too apologized, adding “So, so, so, so…” to her I am Sorry, and it was then that I knew our Concern for one another. She hurried off, wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand, opened the driver’s side door of her chartreuse Acura [which was parked in The Spot! on the side], and left.

With the transience of city-life, people are constantly in and out of these sorts of buildings. Just last weekend, four new tenants replaced four of the original dwellers from when I moved in. Way I see it: more potential for Storywriting, and for Storytelling, and for elaborating on one another’s by Sharing. After all the larger Narrative is concerned with that, isn’t it?

Perhaps Marisa’s old idea of a frontlawn vegetarian barbecue will really catch on with Richard and Tara and Buck, and we’ll be able to show our new resident-aliens some Home.