In every dream home

When I was young, my parents took my siblings and I to see many model homes. There was always a possibility we would move, as my mother never seemed to be happy about where we were living. A tour through a model home would offer us a glimpse of the life we could have.

Model homes were often the first three homes you would see when you entered a new development, and usually they were the only homes there. Around those model homes, of varying designs, was the empty space of a construction site. I've been to many, and they are often exactly alike in terms of the interior design. This isn't surprising given that they are trying to appeal a broad range of consumers with traditional indications of "comfort."

I recall opening the refrigerator to see whether there was any food. There was none. The only food in the house was the plastic fruit in the bowl on the kitchen table. Sometimes there would even be plastic bread and other foods laying on plates. To my siblings and I, going to a model home was somewhat like being able to snoop through someone else's house. Sadly, it was nothing like people's actual homes, as the interesting details were missing. But it sure seemed as if someone lived there.

The decoration didn't vary much model-to-model. The real estate agent would lead us around, inevitably presenting the boys room and the girls room. The girls room was uniformly pink and unnervingly tidy, the boys blue and tidy. There were cardboard books on the shelf, or if it was an actual book, it would be something generic like a Reader's Digest Condensed Book. There were child-like scrawlings on pieces of paper placed on the wall. What was eerie was not only the complete absence of the supposed denizens of this space, but how dull and typical their lives seemed. All of the model homes seemed to house the same family.

The same detritus of family life is also present in different types of showrooms across the country - I have also been to many of these - and in my boredom, tagging along begrudgingly with my mom, I'd hit the tvs of cardboard, or fiddle with the cardboard books. Something disturbed me about the books, especially, since the books seemed the pinnacle of boring, made to look like the sort of tomes lining the wall of an attorney's office. What sort of contents would be in a cardboard book anyway?

From an article in the Chicago Tribune - "The right model can conjure the emotions and mental pictures that help a builder tap into a buyer’s needs, wants and dreams." It is clear what the intention of model homes are, but in retrospect, they have their own sort of beauty, both in the representation of the ideal home life, and the eerie silence of the invisible occupants.

New Westminster, B.C, late November

1. Faded Union Pacific Railroad sign
2. Various LPs in Salvation Army not unlike the U.S collections - e.g, The Moms and the Dads.
3. XXX 25 cent Peep Shows. I am still unused to such things.
4. Muddy environs around factories, smoke emitting from them.
5. Bookstores, including one in which The Magic Mountain was purchased.
6. A landscape not unlike the one seen in a dream I had about visiting New Westminster, in which I was standing on one side of the sidewalk and across the street a terrible gust knocked-down two apartment buildings.
7. A man collapsed in the Sky Train station. I looked back in concern, but ultimately carried on, Sky Train officials attending to him.

plates

Presentation

Your crumpled newspaper
Your lashed branches
Your danger
Your miniature court
Your dioramas
Your asides
Your sink
Your brambling

Winds bury papers swathed in plastic

Your light left on
Your sideways
Your clutching
Your patterns (shields)

And though girls approached me
having traversed the woods
what could I tell them?

I have known the woods too
but embraces are worthless here
So I retreat leaving them to consider
the opposite way

And having wrapped myself in shudders,
I press blankets under the surface
Night into night

Your herald
Your spy
Your distant perch

To collapse here
in the night
a smudge
a stutter

Often, after I have come home work, I am so tired I can hardly divert myself from laying in bed. Today was like that. I laid there, cowering, submerged in blankets and sheets, the mangled pillow next to me gray and blue. The light was dimming, and suddenly I was brought back to being sixteen, or was it seventeen? I lived in Auburn at the time, on the bottom floor of a house that is now in a ruins of sorts. I would often lay in that bed, hiding, a pile of books next to me. I would think about the light and daydream about crushes, probably. Tonight I was comforted by the dusk, the sign of another day passing away. What a gloomy sort I am. I had just read about Virginia and West Virginia, and was thinking about the former, especially. I thought about the horrific things that had happened there, the numerous Civil War battlegrounds, the vanished Roanoke Colony, and Nat Turner.

After I had napped, at least I think I had fallen asleep, I took a walk around the Eastside neighborhood to try to awaken myself from my stupor. I thought more about battlefields, specifically the former battlefield that my family had visited when I was quite young, and how I had been told about Civil War history the entirety of that day. I want to see it again, and I want to understand why I was so entranced by Tennessee when I was young. I wandered around the Eastside, and I thought about these things, and I listened to Steve Young, nor surprisingly.

Not having much money, I am going to stay in this weekend. At the moment, I am listening to Sparks (but of course) and through the small windows of my apartment, the sky is a morose blue-gray, a retreating sort of color. Perhaps of the weathered armor in museums, or the quiet of a battlefield a hundred years after the battle. It is broken up by the flickering of branches. In the recent days, squirrels and crows have squawked and squealed near my window, startling me. I have two plums I need to eat. I don't even recall the last time I had a plum.

guide to forgotten vehicles

Observances, late August

A cat laying supine on a lawn, licking itself stubbornly.
The water tower, overseer of the Eastside, against the dusk sky.
A black cat darting out onto the street, quickly darting back to its home.
Downtown, hooting and hollering coming from the direction of Charlie's, a band rehearsing nearby.
Lights on various lawns, some on, some off, others brighter than others.
I had a difficult time concentrating on the Alabama essay, because of said hooting, and discussion of good fortune in San Francisco.

I suggest:

ritual static

I drove through the night, it was just like the old days. When I was alone and would travel to obscure part of the outlaying areas of the suburbs, down a winding farm road for a few miles or down the streets of closed retail in the middle of the night. Tonight I drove to the pier, and pulled into the large gravel parking lot. It was near one a.m. I pulled up, turned the car off and sat there for a moment. I got spooked, by the possibility of some figure jumping out of the brush or emerging from the Sound, covered in muck. I quickly drove away, back the way I came. I had the radio on, near the end of the broadcast. It is the best part. It reminds me of the end of broadcast days and how there would be the national anthem, images of flags waving, picturesque views, then the last triumphant strains, then fuzz, all through the night.

Spines sprawled with words (part one)

The first library I encountered was located in St. Charles, a suburban city an hour West of Chicago. It was on the other side of town, on a small hill that towered above the street, covered in dark brick and somewhat obscured by trees. I came to associate the library with other worlds, not only because the books within suggested this, but the construct itself was distant and unlike anywhere else, except maybe the museum, another beloved sanctuary of artifacts. The public library in St. Charles may have had two floors, but I only recollect the first, where the children's and young adult books rested. The ceiling was low, the space overwhelmingly white and airy. During one notable visit, I roamed the tall stacks of the section for intermediate readers. There was a promotional poster for The Whipping Boy on the wall. I became entranced with its eerie cover art with the depiction of figures on horseback traveling through the mist, while formidable creatures looked on the travelers from behind a tree. I immediately sought after a copy.

It was a slim book with a blue back. When I got home, I clutched it lovingly and ran my hands down its taut spine. The library was the harbor of books such as this - books that would transport me, and reveal previously unknown secrets. I don't recall much else about what I checked out from this library, but I do recall feeling as if I had found a place where I belonged.

The public library in Pembroke Pines, Florida was within a brand new sprawl of identical homes and shimmering swimming pools and man-made lakes. The library I was most familiar with throughout these years was within the confines of the Broward Community College. It always felt a bit too small and neglected. I recall feeling some disappointment with the rather small collection. But still, it existed, and for that I was grateful, as I was grateful for the chain bookstores. One pushed past a long, cushioned entrance arm and you were greeted by the check-out area. Past this main section one came upon a desk for the reference librarians and a childrens play area. To the right where the stacks in which I so often lingered. The first floor was the children and young adult section almost exclusively, with a small section for periodicals and mass-market paperbacks. It was among one of my first trips to this library that I was given many recommendations for books by my mother (or was it my father?) including a book that one of my parents urged me to check out that had a terrifying image of a lady's face frozen in glass on another planet. The book was Ursula K. LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness.

It was on that or one of these early visits that I came across another cover that haunted me. The cover showed a girl giving a furtive over-the-shoulder glance at a boarded-up house. I fixated on the house, as I was fascinated with boarded-up buildings at the time. That same day I followed my mother to the second floor where the adult fiction was kept. At her feet, I explored the spines of the books on the bottom row. The protective covers gleamed over the predominantly black covers. Many of the books I pulled were covered in bright red blood, or velvet, or suggested great romance, or a combination of the two. Perhaps we were in the mystery section? Either way, I came to associate the library with the forbidden. The luxuriousness of the imagery enveloped me like a perfume, and has clung to me since. What a divine black, the black of mystery novel covers!

It wouldn't be until a few weeks before I moved across the country at the age of sixteen that Pembroke Pines would finally get a proper public library. I was astounded that they had albums that one could check out. Though the musical selection was meager, it was still exciting for a library to have music, and movies, even. I recall checking out Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, if only out of curiosity about what the hype was all about. The library I came to know soon enough in Auburn, Washington was, at the time, the most remarkable library to make my acquaintance. In 1999, when I moved to the state of stately trees and underground coffee reserves, the Auburn Library was about to be relocated to a brand new building. It was my great fortune than to see the Auburn Library before it transformed into the modern building in which it now resides. It smelled like "Old Library", and was clearly from the 50's or 60's. I was charmed immensely, and after sighing up to be a part of the King County Library System, checked out a huge stack of books. There was no greater delight than partaking in the books in my backyard, the lumbering trees swaying slightly far above.

Not long after, I discovered the immense music collection within the King County Library System. I was astounded by its depth, not only at the Auburn Branch, but within each branch, and the fact that you could request anything from within the system. This meant that all the bands I read about online and or heard on KCMU I could listen to, and for free! There is no question that the library altered the course of my life. I devoured music like a buffet of delicacies set out for the rich and luxurious. It was this way that I discovered the Magnetic Fields and Smog and all kinds of folk and ethnic music and everything else. It was also at the Auburn Library that I checked out dozens of books at a time. There was so much to know, and I rarely got through those books, but heaven knows I tried.

dispensary

Old pillows. The color of a milk carton. Circa midnight, or was it four a.m. The first time we went to the circus, candy was spilled in the aisles. Banisters and darkness above, it reminded me of the ocean. Arms alight slid across. The smell of freshly pressed plastic filled the air.

"What about knives and rain?"

girl on girl

I hide the girl in my hair. I am the girl, the girl. A dainty ornament, a plural of blue shades. I clutched the mirror and smeared lines down my face.

factories/graves

I am in a cafe in a small town within the confines of the Northwest region of the United States. In this cafe are booths. Some are occupied with lowered heads, concentrating on activities. The floor is rough with footsteps from throughout the day. I heard that familiar song coming through the speaker, with the words "As I hurdled down the highway, past the factories and the graves", and it reminded me of many things. I am reminded of all the times and places I have heard those words, and how every time it stirred something in me, and gestured at faint memories. I recall a few weeks ago, and hearing those words while in the midst of a town populated by casinos and commerce. It made me think of the original incarnations of my nights spent with this song. Those words are more than just hints at my times spent with them, but what they suggest. I have had a long love affair with factories, industrial settings, especially at night, smoke aglow in the darkness. I am plunged into thoughts on the historical ramifications of this setting. How it didn't exist so-and-so many years ago. How it exists now, but will cease to one day. There are small, persistent lights. Clanking softly among the trees.

Holes in the feather of a loon
Its beaded eye a light of passing
armor in its chest
a shield of swords
perched atop a pillar

There are rows of pins, and diagrams
He brushed the glass
they rested under.

Around him shapes emerge
and regard him
the curator, a saint of messes
His domain: of crushed muffins,
shattered plums

They pray to be held on his palm
To be adored and arranged
For objects wish to be given a name

The thrushes that gather round
their eyes glow among the brances
swing stiffly underneath his palm