My Mental Milkcrate » snippets from somewhere

Two nights away

Jessica N. Coles — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 15:09:02 +0000

I find myself succumbing and not succumbing to the gravity of reviewing the past ten years. I have no top 10s, no list of favourite moments. I have rediscovered the value of steeping in the past, but the record of my personal tastes is less than necessary. I see forward momentum in the clicking of the calendar.

Meditation, following meandering paths, seems appropriate now. Escaping the weight of city life and people. Finding a place for myself among silences and snowflakes. I wrap myself in solitude. Slip past midnight into this new year.

Shift

Jessica N. Coles — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 05:12:07 +0000

I went out tonight in search of beautiful, useless things. To remember that the existence of beautiful, useless things is necessary. Notebooks and necklaces. Scarves and teacups. The troves within boutiques, specialty shops, and purveyors of the unique and rare. I dawdled and gloated and revelled in beautiful, useless things.

I came home with only Fiesta Red ink for my fountain pen. Feeling quiet and expansive. Shifting into this other self. Who is breathing gently into the darkness of mid-December, thrilled by every string of Christmas lights.

Denial

Jessica N. Coles — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 01:36:15 +0000

At 6:30, a cup of coffee with cream and hints of sugar. Let my tongue float on the muddy brown with eyes closed, slipping into consciousness. Safety lives inside this paper cup. Comraderie, comfort, security. All the heft of a single day balanced against my lips. And with a slight tilt of the wrist, spills back into the throat, and sails through circulatory seas to those far-off synapses who fire a cheer of welcome. Too many miles until sleep. Because. We accept this.

A logic of colours

Jessica N. Coles — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 04:32:59 +0000

We stood where green turned to blue, watching the spectrum spin in all directions, caught in the spray of a garden hose. We heard the kaleidoscope tinkle mosaic out of the windows of old houses. Old homes. We were yellow and orange and purple and all the glint of silver and gold. And we knew where to put the shadowy black to bring out the fire in red.

Silence isn’t any better

Jessica N. Coles — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 04:03:17 +0000

I’m exhausted. Exhilarated? An ‘e’ word. Though ‘e’ is far to common a letter to be lovable. Find me a ‘q’. A ‘j’. The quiet ways they jostle against the palate. The alveolar ridge. Burbling over the tongue in clumsy tumbles. The way words ought to more often. In jigs across the larynx.

Once upon a World in a Time far, far away

Jessica N. Coles — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:14:52 +0000

Ours was a grand and glorious love affair. The fabric of clichés — the pattern from which clichés became threadbare. It began with a toe. Or maybe it ended with a toe. Somewhere in the affair was the incident of the toe in the night. And if you have never heard the phrase Our love is deeper than the cut that severs a toe, perhaps you have never known how exquisitely inexplicable these compulsions of devotion are.

Second floor (II)

Jessica N. Coles — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 20:08:17 +0000

I can see the TV again, flickering darkly. He has stepped out onto his patio for a cigarette. The ash end flares orange into the midnight parking lot. He must see the little lamp in the window of my office nook and the shape of my head, but I don’t think he can tell I am looking at him. Truthfully, I’m not certain that he is looking up at me. So perhaps we have been staring at each other curiously unconscious of self. Never acknowledging with wave or nod the seconds that we shared in silence. Never betraying awareness of the other’s presence. But maybe he, like me, gloats over a few stolen glimmers of a human across the pre-autumn evening.

Second floor

Jessica N. Coles — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 03:27:45 +0000

Silence is all I have tonight. The silence of sparsely populated buses and late-night cyclists. I can see the flicker of a TV through a window across the parking lot. The screen flicks colours faster than my eye can register from this distance. So I play guessing games: video games, the news, sports, an old movie. Maybe all swirled into the fuzz of channel surfing. Sub-aural messages into the darkness. They hold me like the strange touch of a new friend. I shut my blinds and pretend there is nothing but silence.

Half-written

Jessica N. Coles — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 03:43:37 +0000

I have crisped under hot skies and I’m ready for the cooling. August isn’t even half done, but my summer is on the downswing. I have started to notice that the daylight is less: the sun is finally exhaling after weeks of holding its breath. I am deeply aware of the twilight tonight. I am deep in the twilight.

A young Old Man reminded me (inadvertently and impersonally) that a song that must be written if you can hear it, and must be shared if it’s your heart. So I picked up my guitar again and waited for my throat to catch. I am deeply aware of the twilight tonight. And all that’s missing here are the fireflies and the firelight and maybe your face. I am deep in the twilight.

Sleep is walking back to me, washing under me, and tickling my feet. I’m ankles deep in heartbeats that fell from my memories. And we wandered open and wide to the sound of a lazy brown river meandering over the ground. I am deeply aware of the twilight tonight. And your kisses are here in the candlelight. I am deep in the twilight.

Don’t tell my friends I love them

Jessica N. Coles — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 02:10:14 +0000

Email exchange

Me: I miss you a weird amount.

Friend: A weird amount? Like one kilometre? Or 7 1/8th pachyderms?

Me: Exactly. I knew you would understand.