Andersen Morse

Tag: blips

  • A story about me

    There is a story about me. I know it as it was passed down in each retelling than in any original memory inside my head. I was perched up on the lap of my great aunt. Raised up at the dining table. The rest of my birthday party scattered out around us, caught up in their own games. Instead, from what I’m told, I was captivated instead by the colorful letters that spelled out happy birthday on the paper plates. A small hand reaching out, that little index finger pointing and prodding the plate.

    “What’s this?”

    “That’s a B”

    She would have sat there with me all day, to tell me the name of each letter over and over again. I can only now appreciate the second hand joy that she must have felt in witnessing a child experience the world.

    I enjoy stories like this, and not only because that it gives me a modicum of confidence that even then I might have had some predilection towards written words. As the years progress, the stories that we choose to each other grow in importance. Today, I retreat further into books, finding the worlds of fiction more palatable and encouraging than anything happening outside of my front door. I am addicted to the prospective truth that exists between the covers of cheap mass market paperbacks. Even to the small space between the lines of thread bound composition notebooks, slowly filling up with my own nonsense, scribbled down to unladen my mind. There feels a more comfortable space than navigating a public street.

    Its the comfort that exists deep the breaths required to retell all of these old stories. All of the tales, tired and overplayed, but we must come back to ourselves despite all of the chaos. Where in each retelling I might have sat longer and longer on her lap. Testing her patience on how many times she would tell me that one that shoots down is a y. The minute facts of reality have been lost to time. If I even held them once, my brain has dropped them long ago, and no I no longer care.

    Its the love the persists decades later. The resurrection of lost ones. Its the ounce of sadness that balances the scales, dense against light-hearted whimsy. How I feel now, how she must of then, how fleeting we are. Its our oral history of nonsense, that reveals how there is nothing more to this world than that of each other. That all of this labor and turmoil are twisted ways of forging the key to the small box of secrets within ourselves.

  • NYE

    New years has taken on a unique sort of shine in my mind. Often its the last ditch effort to continue our binge run of consumption that we began back in November, or the world’s biggest non event proclaimed by our most logical and militant non believers. I’m a bit somewhere in between. I’ve slept through my share of monumental midnights. I agree that its feels arbitrary. You could find the reasons why it was place where it is somewhere in some textbook I’m sure. A previous set of us made the decision and who followed have been grandfathered into the deal.

    The new years resolution gets flack from both sides of the fight. We tend to agree that this specific date holds not more magic than any other throughout the year. So whats the commotion. Perhaps its the winter’s wind the creeps in through the cracks of the house, making my limbs stiff. I turn up collars and reside under blankets, letting my mind walk instead. Its my predisposition for introspection. Speculation of whats to come. A small habit to feel a little less helpless on this planet. It could be just the chance to forgive myself. An allowance of grace for each time I didn’t quite hit the mark. The times I felt to tired. The times I was just lazy. When I forgot and when I didn’t know. That something I had hoped to achieve might have been a bit too large for me to chew. That its okay to just be as hopeful for next year.

    Remember those years long lost. When you had hoped for just a scrap, and now how much more you have, and how mundane it feels. Remember the weight, its only grown to feel so light. Its all of this wrapped up neatly together as much as life feels chaotic mess of a pile. Its the quiet rhythm of life that can be felt as it ripples out when we pause for this arbitrary moment out in the cold. It doesn’t feel as foolish the longer I take to exist withing it. Its easy to stay for way to long. Listening and meandering through your own soul. Allowing the small whispers of the heart to be heard. A fresh blanket of snow deadens the noise of the world, and in the gaps we can learn about ourselves.

    New Years for me is internal. A small pocket of space exists for it within me. Small and secluded, kept away from everyone else. I like it that way. Its just mine and nobody else. Kept secret away from everybody else. I keep a lot of things like that, too many. New years is a drawn out task, and brief moment. New Years is the drive back home in the dark. Its cold. Its silent, and a song on the radio plays soft. The honest feeling that your left with when its just you and your own thoughts. I love the feeling when honesty pumps through the body like blood. Its a brutal caress.

    I’ve taken to using the last pages of yearly planners to give me a space to think. New goals and old ones I don’t want to give up on yet. New en devours that sound glamorous, and curiosities that might become new interests. I speculate on whats to come, what I could be. Oh there are so many things that you can be. Its simply not letting what you’ve already become get in the way. There is not enough time to be it all. So you have to pick on all the things that you want to be that you never will. I’ll take these and find space at the first vacant pages of next year.

  • Deer Cut

    We arrive after dark. It’s five pm. Communing together at dusk, out in the quiet. I’ve been looking for something that can be felt here. It’s slow beating heart buried deep. The deer is still. Seized in the final straw. I linger for a moment in the car. My wife removes the knives out of the trunk. The bone saw has a fresh blade. She helps carry my burdens.

    The man’s coat reminds me of something of the past. The material is new, but the pattern is old. John Prine sings. At this time my hands begin to operate remotely, remembering what they used to do. I observe. They perform. Three hours will pass, and I barely notice. The exhaustion will not land into my own bones until I return home.

    In the quiet of a pole barn, with only the spirit of the buck to watch me, I feel well enough about myself. For a moment or two, all that is asked of me in this world is to do right by the beast. I’ll try. For a glimmer I feel a part of the world.

  • Pig Butchering

    Today we have taken.
    A release of long held breath, shaken.
    Grasped at what we require.
    In bowing heads to Death, we tire.
    In tradition we reap,
    A celebration we weep.
    Desperate for our own creation.
    Men shy at Mothers manifestation.
    Earth in all her requirements to exist.
    Many we have made to needlessly persist.

  • Sleeping Dogs

    We take them out because we feel guilty. Uncomfortable emotions well up in our insides as we gaze into their eyes. Proficient in inflicting guilt. We bring them along, into awkward spaces, in the backs of cars, held up high in our arms they gaze out over the precipice of our shoulders. They find precarious places on the floor. Stepping over, amongst, and around, we find our weaved in between them. Their snoots shoot out into common pathways. We move and mill about them almost unaware. Caught up in our own games and musings. A trust so pure they don’t even flinch with the grazing of their fur. Risking it be at the center. A masterful display of falling in and out of slumber. Seamless existence between both worlds. A lullaby of all our voices in concert. Quiet contentment. Watching them I can brush against the edge of understanding. How little might be required to have enough.

  • Red Clock

    There is a clock on the mantle. One that’s face is that of old red illuminated numerals. A threatening red. The clock that sits there broadcasting the time blinks in beat. A silent cry that it has lost its own rhythm with the world. It is no longer of use in the way its soul wishes to be. No longer having any bearing to the world around it. I haven’t had the heart to fix it. Only I know what it means to say. I hold the key to its truth. Minus nineteen and you can find your way. Running in sync I can never catch up. Its jumped ahead, now living ahead on its own. Always appearing later than it actually is. I find myself ahead of schedule.