the calm...

where is my mother?
backward, forward, that rocking motion.
we become accustomed to it. expect the shift.
a member of the hemlock society in its nascent years,
now she is projectile, a missile with a programmed
target and the ability to forget.

no brainer

what is it like to grow old. old beyond your time. older than you ever thought you were capable of being. so old. how can this be? because it's never in the conventional sense. it's not about growing old, it's about being, believing or not. it's about not being afraid of being alone. it's about losing. all that loss. and then, nothing. is that what we're supposed to become accustomed to? no matter how many times, how many ways, how unspeakable, how unpredictable it may be, we'll never get used to it.

Tight Fit

He looks around at the flagrant display of Dior, Armani, Jacobs and Blahnik marching past like a fashion show and wonders why conspicuous consumers don’t wear money, stock quotes, bank statements and economic forecasts instead of designer clothes. At least it would be more honest and hell, they’d be recycling all that paper. That way no one would have to guess their net worth.

no time

I've been wrestling with tense. Tense about tense. Unintentionally when I started writing September 10th I was working in the present tense then somewhere along the way I realized what I was doing and had to question it. There's a reason for it. Time compressed into a single moment--a metaphor for the compression of Brian's life--how the magnitude of a single event can implode an entire life. In pursuit of anonymity the past doesn't matter anymore and the future doesn't exist.

The mechanics of doing this have been problematic. Like a cinematographer shooting live I was capturing it documentary style yet I (the omniscient narrator) was no longer present. So how can the conjugation change midstream, the tense reverse course? I go back and forth and in the editing find myself constantly adjusting. This is my dilemma. The dilemma of invention, I guess.