Overcast

Cloudy with a chance of rain.

A - or 1

Don Delilo said writing is a concentrated form of thinking. But when I write, thinking is a bad idea.

I work best letting my fingers go across the keys like a piano player. I try to stay in time, letting lyric match the tempo of my keyboard’s percussion. Sometimes, I doodle with pen and paper. But most likely, if I’m really trying to put something together, I’m on the computer. 

Technically, I don’t even write on my own device. I write on a cloud-based word processing software through a web browser. I scribble directly into the internet.

My strokes on the keyboard soar to the nearest tower, record themselves in a data lake somewhere in California, and return back to make an appearance on my screen, giving me the impression of characters, words, and sentences.

I have a friend named Mike. Mike was in the Army Corps of Engineers. He is a very technical man. He told me about a paper he wrote in the 80s on Artificial Intelligence. His professor told him he should publish it but he never did. 

I told Mike I used Google Docs and he said that wasn’t secure. That they’d be mining me for data. I trust Mike’s expertise on things like this. But I don’t think I care if I’m being mined. I may prefer it.

I ramble and prattle and these streams of prose spill out and run away from me. Would it be so bad, if they lived somewhere in the cloud? If I found the prying eyes of some unknown audience—even if the audience was just a cadaverous algorithm?

Most of the time, I like what I write. But I don’t always synthesize the writing into story, into poetry, into essay. I play around and pick out a few meandering melodies. 

They say that good prose should resemble a clear window. But the view in my mind is foggy.

Maybe my own breath is what stains the glass. But it could be that the weather itself is overcast. The chance of rain is still up in the air, too ambivalent to fall and leave the world petrichordant in its wake. 

Whatever the reason, I usually fail to live up to this well-intentioned piece of advice. I defend myself by saying I aim to be opaque or impressionistic, that I write in streams of consciousness.

But these streams often fall without a home. Maybe someday, they’ll run on and find one another. Tributaries that feed a watershed, pulled by a compelling current that brings them at long last to a deep vast sea.

These incipient drops have yet to find that. And while they condense, they’ll sit here on the cloud, ready to precipitate into any receptacle that will collect them.

B - or 0

Tender and tendril-rooted space that lifts between the viscous line. A raindrop dances on sunlit termination. Net out of this or that type. A space board within a line creeps up and down. Following the suit of the hand that was dealt before. Now I know this type of symmetry. Now I feel her when she follows. 

Sympathetic sounds, like rain falling on a window pane, blurring your view into clarity. Rains fall and collect themselves. Feed a watershed then find their absolution in the sea. Or they obliterate, vacillate into the same cycle.

Nowadays, there isn’t a time I haven’t heard it. The ring of truth in the shape of its container. 

It’s fragmented and compartmentalized until you feel its own weight. A screaming across the sky—sea streaming through the clouds. Levitate by the pull of polarity and hum down a train-line. 

No matter now exists in this space. I type and the words fly through the air. Imprint on the satellite and feed me through metal towers. Livened by this or that, I can’t seem to seek out what couldn’t be made. 

I’m a milquetoast personality. Now completely voided and washed of what I wanted to say. 

That is that, I am the absolution. That is that, I am the whitewashed and abolished, that is my sense and sensibility have been removed from me. I don’t have a sense or connection. I feel like I’m not in with myself. When was the last time I felt connected? Young and free, at the age of 17? Before the fall? Before the fall. Before the loss. Before the balloon was filled with lead. I buoy myself up with these thoughts, but now even the memory of those times are deadened by the consequence of the impact. 

But is there anything to it yet? No, I just keep typing, keep spewing. I just keep recording. GONGS AND BIRD CHIRPS FOLLOW EACH THOUGHT. PUNCTUATE ITS NOISE WITH A BRIGHT RESOLUTION. WINDCHIME DENOTING THE MOMENT AND PLACE. A TIME WHEN WYSTERIA HANGS CHARRED ON THE VINE. A TIME WHEN THE FIRST PURPLE BUDS SPRING FROM THE TALLEST SPRIGS OF LAVENDER.