* * *

BTW: The photo art and prose included in any given post are separate creations having nothing to do with each other. Duality and such …

* * *

The Agendas

He thought of the preacher who rode his circuit on an ass because, he said, ‘it worked for Jesus’. He’d soon changed that to ‘it reminds people of Jesus’ since it wasn’t working at all as a reliable mode of transportation. But it clearly reminded somebody that Jesus rode it into the city where he would be crucified because, at a particularly infamous stage of one particular journey, he was robbed, beaten, and murdered for the $13.69 he’d collected at the last town. Thought of him, not that he’d actually known him. So far as he knew, no one did; it was just a story told by traveling preachers to remind each other not to get too sanctimonious. Thought of him now, he guessed, because he was leading his lame horse into his next town.

He’d been assigned six churches in six towns by the Synod. Each town was somewhere between three and six days ride if he stayed to a set route, plus he always stayed over a day to meet parishioners, perform weddings or funerals, and generally have a breather. The entire circuit at that rate took a little over three weeks, so each church got services on whichever day of the week he happened to get there. In this case he was getting to town late Monday evening, so services would be Tuesday morning, 9 a.m. sharp.

He’d been riding his mare into four years. He got her young, but meek. She was always meek, so she was always easy to ride; never fast, but always easy. And she was on the small side, some even called her fragile. But he figured he wasn’t riding her hard anyway, and he liked her gentleness. “At least,” one other preacher told him when he got her, “You’re not riding an ass.”

Indeed, he’d found her to be a wonderful traveling companion; never got spooked, even in thunderstorms, and seemed to bond to him quickly. Light brown in color with lots of white bands, including one down her nose, and he called her Penelope. He liked to sing hymns to himself as he traveled alone and she actually seemed to enjoy that; actually seemed to step a little higher and a little livelier, though he suspected it was his imagination. But also indeed, that fragility meant she tired on longer rides, and she often began favoring a leg, as though one or more of her fetlocks were terribly sore. He carried with him an ointment an old cowboy told him about, and every night he would wrap each fetlock with a dab of it and that seemed to help. If she seemed particularly worn down, he’d stop early; give her a chance to rest. Sometimes he even took an extra day. Lately, though, that seemed to be the case more often, and that little over three weeks to make the circuit had grown to right at five. That, he was pretty sure, would annoy the churches and eventually the Synod but nobody had said anything yet. On this day he knew he should stop, but he was so close to town. Maybe just another hour would see him there, so he kept going. Just a quarter mile or so outside town, Penelope whinnied loudly and stopped using her right front hoof. He quick jumped off, let her rest a few minutes, then led her the rest of the way on foot, each step clearly painful. When they reached the stable there at the edge of town the stableman took one look at her and said, “Well, shit.”

They spent time looking her over and wrapped each fetlock, the right front in particular, and the stableman said he’d look after her and try to get her healed up. Nothing else he could do, the Preacher took his saddlebags which contained his few clothes, his bible, his notebook in which he scribbled sermons, and his sketchpads and pencils, and headed off to the Widow Roxanne’s boarding house where he always stayed. He passed the jail on the way, noticed the inmate inside watching him, heard carpenters building something behind it. Oh, please not a scaffold, he thought. He tried to remember if there’d been a trial or something last time he’d been through but was too upset over Penelope to think. On the one hand, he hated hangings and hoped to be out of town before then. But on the other hand, hangings always brought more people to town which swelled the folks he could preach to, which also filled the collection plate.

“Get me out of this, preacher?” the inmate called to him.

He called back after a couple beats, “Trust in the Lord, my son.” It was a cliché response but was the best he come up with as preoccupied as he was.

Another few beats and the inmate called, “He ain’t done me no damn good and I ain’t your damn son you worthless damn son of a bitch.”

Seemed to fit his mood.

The Widow Roxanne saw him coming up the street and met him on the porch; he always wired the next town when he left the last, so she knew he was coming. “I saved you a room, but t’weren’t easy,” she said. “Hanging tomorrow”.

He put his saddlebags down, smiled warmly and said, “I so appreciate that, ma’am, I sure do. Been lots happening, I guess”.

She said, “That Kyle kid was always horse thiefin’; shot a man and got caught this time. Open and shut case, sentence passed. Hanging Noon tomorrow”.

He nodded. “Can we still do services tomorrow.”

“Word’s been spread,” she said, “9 a.m. sharp. C’mon inside and rest yourself; supper in a couple hours.”

It was a good pot roast when it came and he shared it with six other women and men staying that night there at the boarding house, but he found he wasn’t all that hungry. He brought out his sketchpad and made portraits of some of the other guests, delighting each of them. He never charged anything when he sketched, but he’d found it usually came back to him through the collection plate, which he knew would be bursting the next day. He tossed and turned most of the night, as he often did sleeping indoors. He’d thought it because he was so accustomed to sleeping outside, but as he lay there it dawned on him it was because he missed being close to Penelope. He rose and dressed before the sun was much above the horizon, didn’t wait for breakfast, went straight for the stables. True to his word, the stableman seemed to have spent the night there, was gently rubbing Penelope’s sore fetlock, but when he looked up and saw the Preacher his expression was sorrowful and grim.

“Well,” he said, “Have a look.”

He went around and into the stall and saw Penelope holding her right front hoof off the ground and the fetlock swollen and inflamed.

Stableman said, “I think you knew when you brought her in.”

Preacher nodded. “I knew when it happened. It’d been coming on, I guess, I just didn’t want to think about it.”

“Yeah”, stableman said, “She’s a sweet little thing, I can see why you wouldn’t.”

They were quiet a moment, Penelope watching him forlornly with her deep, brown eyes.

Stableman said, “I guess you know what has to happen.”

Preacher said. “Yep.

Stableman said, “Want me to take care of it for you? You can go on off to the church, get ready for services.”

Preacher said, “I don’t carry the instrument, so I guess you’ll have to. But no, I don’t want her to be alone.”

Stableman nodded like he knew exactly. “We’ll lead her out back, away from the other animals. I’ll be right back.”

He went off to get what he needed, and the Preacher affectionately stroked his Penelope’s nose. He put his forehead against her, closed his eyes. He felt himself building agendas of all the little logistical items that would have to be done next, and he felt himself building them up like sandbags holding back a flood. Extra chairs would have to be had. Were there enough songbooks? He had to tell somebody this and he had to tell somebody that and, mostly, he had to figure out a sermon.

He tightened his agenda as he heard the stableman shuffling towards him, carrying the instrument, a round clicking into its chamber, a flood on the other side.

​- CH

* * *

BTW: The photo art and prose included in any given post are separate creations having nothing to do with each other. Duality and such …

* * *

Impossible

Reconstruction of the interchange nearest the funeral home was recently completed, so it was much wider, much smoother than before, and it dumped him rapidly back onto the four west-bound lanes of the busy interstate with relatively light drama. He merged between an Audi SUV and a Camaro, two more lanes still to the left if he wanted them, but he didn’t, traffic moving steadily, if sedately, impatient but restrained, as if reflecting the end of the morning rush hour, just as he reflected the end of his friend’s life. Not that he’d known him that well, no better than he knew this stretch of interstate that he found reason to navigate every couple months or so. Guy he had worked with, had lunched with, traded daily pleasantries with, made casual conversation with. He roughly knew the composition of his family, knew the sports teams he rooted for, knew the shows he watched, remembered a couple of the jokes he’d told because those were the things that defined casual acquaintance. He’d arrived at the visitation about halfway through and signed the book on the way in. The family had decided to forgo the standard receiving line in favor of milling with the couple dozen well-wishers and he was happy about that. He wandered along, spent time looking at the pictures of the guy’s life arranged throughout and watched the slide show of more photographs projected onto a wall. Turns out the guy had received a couple awards from the civic organization he’d belonged to, so he lingered at those. He hadn’t known about the civic organization or the awards. He recognized that was likely the tip of the iceberg of things he didn’t know. He didn’t see any of the old crew, or perhaps simply didn’t recognize them; hadn’t met the wife before and wasn’t sure who she was or whether he should barge into conversation to find out. He stood at the body respectfully for a few minutes – thought the guy looked pissed off laying there – wandered slowly past the photographs again and was out of there, as planned, well before the memorial service began. He hadn’t talked to anyone, just smiled, and nodded at a few who seemed to want to nod and smile back.

The flow of traffic on the interstate didn’t seem incongruous to that experience; a slow and brief familiarity with each other on the way to splitting off, he to another interstate that led back to his office, or his apartment further on. He found himself thinking less about his friend, whom he had arguably barely known well enough to call a friend, than about his ex-wife, who two days before had called to cry over the death of her cat. Theirs had not been the most amicable of break ups, it coming after twenty-five years of lukewarm marriage, yet in her profound grief over her cat (a creature he had not missed in the slightest) she had sought him out for solace. He admitted, as he thought about it, that he missed the marriage and what they had built together, if not necessarily the relationship itself, and he felt an emptiness over that; a death in and of itself. Just at that moment the highway flowed over the crest of a long rise, and he could see miles and miles into the distance, all eight-lanes of the interstate stretching to the horizon, and every inch of it covered, saturated with vehicles. At that second it struck him the sheer number seemed impossible; every vehicle at least one person, every person a different path, moving away and towards different points, different origins, and different conclusions. And this was just one of a half dozen interstates into, out of, and around the city, and this was just a small city at best.  He thought about his son off one path to the military because it seemed like the easiest thing to do, then about his daughter who had graduated nursing school just in time for a pandemic to exhaust and drain her of any enthusiasm she might have had for the profession. He thought of his youngest daughter, still at home with his ex and into piercings and tats and with a vague idea of a liberal arts college he couldn’t begin to afford. He thought of all of them, of his friend lying in his casket, of his ex-wife, of his ex-wife’s dead cat, of all the people moving towards their own conclusions, no more invested in each other than were the vehicles on this highway, no more courteous than necessary to not smash into each other. That’s when the emptiness of his perspective amplified and swallowed him. What he should have felt at the visitation. What he should have felt at the breakup of his marriage and the disconnectedness of his family. Surrounded by individuals locked in their separate vehicles traversing the same stretch of highway at the same time, for however briefly.

He saw clearly from his point on the crest that the highway would pull them all in different directions. Then he began to cry.

​- CH

Something new. I've begun making digital art.

For the uninitiated, digital art begins with a blank canvas, as opposed to photo art wherein the finished art is derived from a photographic capture. In the case of the later, the artist applies any number of computer adjustments and filters to interpret the photograph in heightened way. A photograph may certainly be captured creatively; photo art reverses the process and interprets the capture creatively, artistically. Notice, I don’t think of the starting point as a photograph – I think of it as a capture.

There is no ‘capture’ with digital art, aside from that which the artist imagines in their own head. The artist shifts their imagination onto the computer screen using an input device like a mouse or, preferably, and stylus and a drawing pad. Every line, every dot, must be input by the artist, versus the computer interpreting lines and dots as the artist instructs it.

Yeah - that’s a fancy way of saying it’s painting on a computer.

For this work, I began by making a pen sketch (which I would later hide just as an artist using a canvas hides their initial sketch), then layered over heavy brush strokes, watercolor and spatter, and finally adjusted the background with shading and graphite penciling.

This is my first completed digital work.

- CH

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BTW: The photo art and prose included in any given post are separate creations having nothing to do with each other. Duality and such …

* * *

Previous verses ... click to follow links ...

Finding The New Ones
Sleeping With A New One
Love In Phase

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Sweaty Guy With Glasses On The Hot End Of The Building

Farmed off to a basement room they all hated in a poorly circulated building across town in a neighborhood with no decent place for lunch was the Bugaboo staff. The official title was something more boring, something separating them into a segregated section of the much larger division that delt with error tracking and identifying malfunctions – operative word being ‘identify’, and mission being fixing it. The Bugaboo staff was staffed with tracking stuff that was anomalous – stuff that didn’t fit into a particular category of problem, if indeed a problem actually existed. Such as, why did certain drones not ‘talk’ to certain other drones? Each of the thousands of drones in the air was supposed share data with every other drone about the millions of people whose every move they were tracking. Wasn’t really a problem – at least no one thought so - because, as long as the drones were sharing data with the complete network, it didn’t matter that certain drones were excluded. It was just curious. If the Bugaboo staff ever figured it out, first a committee would have to decide whether or not it was a problem. If it was, it would be taken away from the quirky, nerdy bunch of folks assigned to the Bugaboo staff and given to others to figure out.

The role of the Bugaboo staff, then, was to watch the weird stuff, red flag them if they could show an actual problem, then get the hell out of the way. The Bugaboo staff sort of quietly resented that, just as they resented the wide open, wall-less and cubical-less warehouse space they had to work in, the sick-green color of the walls, the bad lighting, the crappy circulation in which one side was too hot and the other too cold and the air always stale, the noisy echoes that bounced around from every little sound or sneeze or chair-leg-squeak, and the cheap-ass chairs they were given to sit in. They resented it, but of course would never say anything. The Authoritarians would not tolerate it.

This one guy in question on the Bugaboo staff slid his glasses back up his nose – he was constantly sliding his glasses back up his nose – and used a tissue to mop his cheeks and forehead. He took a swig from his water bottle. He had a condition in which he sweated a lot. He used prescription anti-perspirant/deodorant and special body wash to counteract it, but it didn’t always work like he wanted. He was also assigned to a desk on the side of the building that ran too hot. That’s just how it went, he thought, and never complained.

He put the water bottle down and turned back to his computer. He could see his reflection a little in the screen. He had a bushy moustache that covered completely his thin upper lip. His eyes were close together and small, and though the thick lenses of his glasses made them look normal-sized, they also exaggerated and warped their shape. He was sensitive about it, but it motivated him to work harder and, indeed, he was good at tracking bugaboos. He was the guy who had figured out why some small data streams were just slightly larger than certain other data streams. They knew deviants were disseminating unapproved information – he’d been the guy that figured out the deviants were using a device that broke the information streams into tiny bits that attached themselves to nondescript data streams, then broke off and reassembled themselves somewhere downstream they couldn’t find. The big shots at up at division hadn’t figured out what to do about it yet, but, hey, wasn’t his problem anymore they told him.

His hand worked a control knob to adjust the attitude of the drone he was piloting, taking it a bit lower to his subject. He’d been assigned to a team studying the bugaboo of why some people appeared ‘fuzzy’, in an electronic sort of way, to the drones. The signal the drones collected just wasn’t ‘sharp’ for some people, and observational data seemed to be missing. It confused the drones, each of which monitored hundreds of individuals at the same time, and the fuzziness for some of them was like a record skipping.

He’d already ascertained that the fuzziness in question seemed to be briefly present when an individual dropped from the drones’ view. He later found it was there, just for a split second, when an individual popped back into view. Since the bugaboo of people seeming to drop in and out of view was being studied by a different team, he hadn’t said anything yet because he knew the two teams would then be merged and he hated some of those guys.

Then he got an idea about phasing – an element of string theory that hypothesized that matter could exist in different forms in the same space if they were phased in such a way that their atoms fell between each other. It had applications in a number of disciplines but had never been applied to electronic surveillance devices. So he spent parts of several shifts writing a code, requested and received permission to take manual control of a particular drone, and had just, not long before, uploaded the code.

The drone had been programmed to monitor a group of artists in the theater district. Artists were automatically considered potential deviants. When they dispersed, he selected a particular guy, tracked him home, scanned his neighborhood, watched him enter a building, climb stairs, and enter his apartment, an eerie infrared picture of the neighborhood on his screen surrounded by text labeling data streams. Now he activated the code he had uploaded.

There were hundreds. They appeared out of thin air, did not appear to be human. He sucked air. His small eyes opened big. Data streams went crazy – red lights all over his screen.

He zoomed into his subject. He had crawled into bed. There was something there with him. And they were lovers.

- CH

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BTW: The photo art and prose included in any given post are separate creations having nothing to do with each other. Duality and such …

* * *

Previous verses ... click to follow links ...

Finding The New Ones
Sleeping With A New One

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Factors Contributing To Homo Sapiens Evolutionary Failure
By Anonymous
(Slightly Edited)
 

1. Unable to tolerate radiation or solar variances.
2. Susceptible to chemical and psychological addictions.
3. Easily distracted.
4. Easily deceived and easily self-deluded.
5. Prone to reject diversity and to misperceive differences between peoples.
6. Prone to adopt maladaptive and ultimately self-destructive behaviors based on misperceptions.
7. Acquiesces to rapid, widespread behavioral changes only after significant environmental, social, or economic stress overcomes inherent self-delusions.
8. Tendency to seek external scapegoats
9. No natural selection for overcoming these disadvantages.

 
* * *

Love In Phase

She had never fully ascertained at what point it was okay not to pretend to sleep as her lover curled close to her. Deep, slow, profoundly contented breathing, sweet and innocent, her funny artist, who knew who she was.

Her mother had suggested she was merely keeping him as a pet. She considered that supposition and saw its merits, but believed it was based on incomplete information. Her mother did not have firsthand information regarding the emotional strength of their relationship. It was a clinical conclusion, but, of course, that’s how she … They … did things.

It corresponded with point number four of the nine recognized ‘Factors Contributing To Homo Sapiens Evolutionary Failure’, as identified by the humans themselves. Self-delusion was not in her … Their … nature.

She wasn’t sleeping next to her sweet lover because she didn’t sleep. Her brain achieved the same function by entering into a meditative, but fully aware, state, lasting a fraction of the time, which she engaged on the fly at numerous times throughout the day. She was not easily deceived, or self-deluded, because her brain was not compartmentally organized as humans had been, and due to a small section of the frontal lobe, not present in humans, which perceived and reconciled fact-based logic with emotions; in short, she did not rationalize. And her presence was not detected by the swarm of drones with which the human’s authoritarian government tracked every move, every subliminal action of every unspoken thought, because she … They … were phased.

Her great great grandmother also had a relationship with a human. She recalled that the result of that union, her great grandfather, had been considered just slightly odd, if, on the other hand, of an advanced situational awareness which enabled him to be quite successful. Less well documented was the supposed relationship with a human several generations prior to that. Human DNA, while quite diluted, was present in all of Them.

So was Neandertal DNA in homo sapiens. That’s how it goes.

Her lover moved in his sleep and seemed to whisper, eyes moving rapidly under his eyelids – dreaming, she knew. A brain function she accomplished more efficiently and without the subject-to-interpretation imagery. She reached over to lightly stroke his hair. To do that, she had to just slightly phase-shift. The natural harmonics of her body’s molecules … Their bodies’ molecules … were just slightly off the human phase, like two pictures of the same thing just a hair apart. She … They … could phase shift due to a section of the hippocampus also not present in humans. She could move between just barely even with human phasing to completely invisible. That was how she … They … could both be seen and undetectable by electronic imagery. Phased away from humans, They had their own society, their own hospitals and schools and grocery stores and homes, unseen yet occupying the same space. Phased with humans, they could access the same information and resources. Humans counted their population at nearly ten billion.

But they only thought there were that many.

They could also hear the Earth. Due again to a piece of brain the humans didn’t have, They could feel what the Earth felt, knew when it was being hurt. That was another reason to phase with humans; to influence them towards behaviors less destructive to the planet. Attempting such influence was frustrating and slow, but preferable to discovery.

Stroking her lover’s forehead as he breathed, she knew she was likely just visible to the swarm of drones outside. She also knew that even at that level of phasing the drone wouldn’t quite know what to make of her, not quite be able to detect her. It was a trick They used all the time when They wanted to skim the surface of human phasing. She could feel one of the drones watching him, as he slept, but not her. She smiled at her lover. The drone couldn’t see her.

And then, quite suddenly, it could. And everything changed.

- CH

* * *

BTW: The photo art and prose included in any given post are separate creations having nothing to do with each other. Duality and such …

* * *

Previous verses ... click to follow links

By Her Lover's Neck
The Prodigal Father
The Road Out Of Town

***

212

Beyond her kitchen window grew a sugar maple that had entered its dormant, bare winter stage after a spectacular red and orange Fall. Past that she kept a flower garden where only a couple mums had survived the first bites of cold which killed the annuals and turned the perennials brown as caskets. The birdbath stood at the farthest corner of that, sturdy concrete base that rose a yard off the ground to its ornate, lotus shaped bowl, which had just lately cracked and had dropped a quarter of its mass to the ground below. Solid, strong, dense, daunting; ruined.

She finished rinsing the rest of the breakfast dishes as quietly as possible – the dishwasher would take care of most of it, but she preferred to eliminate the food residue first. Her husband sat at the kitchen table behind her, the folded paper next to him, unread, likely to stay unread, coffee cup in hand, staring out into space. She had given up trying to read his mind.

Could be he was contemplating leaving with her shortly for his first counseling session, as ordered by the court as a condition of his parole on an assault conviction. The judge had actually gone quite easy on him, recognizing that it was his first offense, that he was clearly struggling and in pain over something, and that the transgression itself, while technically counting as a hate crime, was little more than a couple shoves. Even the gay couple he’d gone after were reluctant to see him severely punished. “You know,” one had told her, “He really needs to talk to somebody.” But she already knew that.

“I had no idea they were gay,” he’d told her over and over. “I’ve known them for years. Seen them in church for years. How could they go to our church and be gay? How could they admit it, right there in our church where we go to be with God?” he asked out loud, not really talking to her, not really looking for her opinion.

“So, why,” the minister would ask him in about an hour while she sat passively, “Since you’ve known them all this time, and been friends with them all this time, and worshipped next to them all this time, would the new knowledge that they’re gay cause you to attack them?” It had been partly due to the reality that counseling resources were scare in their little town (their minister was certified in that regard) and partly because the judge assumed it’d have to be somebody with a cross on his lapel to get through to him that church-based counseling had been agreed to by the court.

“I didn’t really attack them, Pastor, that’s an exaggeration.”

“Oh, no?”

“I just grabbed them by their collars and shook them a little, trying to wake them up.”

“You grabbed them by their necks and shoved them into a cabinet with enough force to knock it over and break it. And you did it in church!”

Her husband closed his eyes tight and shook his head. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand why any of this is happening!”

“That’s what we’re going to find out,” the minister told him calmly, gently, but she knew that wasn’t it.

Could be the thing her husband had been contemplating earlier at the kitchen table while she rinsed the breakfast dishes and looked out at the broken bird bath was what was happening to the world he believed in. He didn’t care what was happening to him; didn’t believe anything was happening to him at all. He hadn’t done anything wrong, as far as he was concerned; hadn’t done anything that didn’t have to happen.

“I don’t understand why we keep letting everything change like this,” he’d said. Since returning months earlier from a fruitless trip to find their daughter after she jumped in her car and drove away, he’d been the very definition of morose. He spent his nights in the dark, staring off into space, brooding, impotent. “I don’t understand why she didn’t come to me,” He’d whispered over and over and over again. “I know she saw me,” he moaned about briefly spotting her across a busy Nashville street. Of course, right after that fleeting glance she’d disappeared. “What did I ever do? What did I ever do?”

Then he’d start in on the evil of the world itself. “You get much away from this town it’s all different. It’s all changed. It’s not the country I grew up in. It’s all wrong. It’s all gone wrong. Oh, my poor darling girl, where have you gone?”

The hardest part now, now as her husband and the minister began their dance into what was wrong with what or with who, was that she knew. Their daughter had called several times, but only to talk to her, to her mother who understood how suffocated and miserable she’d felt at home, just to tell her she was okay. She knew from the 212 area code on the caller ID exactly where her daughter was, why she’d left, why she had run when she saw her father across the street and why she wouldn’t come back. Knew exactly what the problem was. But neither of them were asking her. What could she know? She looked at her husband and knew she could never tell him. Rigid, unyielding, unchanging, inflexible, obstinate. Ruined.

- CH

I wanted to get a few words out about this work, primarily to raise a point. I’ve already posted it on a couple social media platforms, so it may not be unfamiliar. The story behind it is, I had taken a family member to the doctor, then over to have labs done, and was sitting in the waiting room. I noticed the pattern of the chairs in front of me, found them interesting, whipped out the smart phone, opened the Camera+ 2 app, took the shot, then edited it by cropping and adding a series of filters, and shazam! Instant photo art. My family member came out, all being well, and off we went. I posted the work later to Facebook and Twitter just to show off. Maybe 15 minutes of my time.

It’s received over 10 times the response on Twitter as even my best works have gotten lately.

Wait, what?!

Could be any number of explainable reasons. I had posted it as a photo, whereas usually I’m posting a link to this blog. A link means the viewer has to make an extra, overt click and (gasp) read something. That in and of itself probably explains it. Could also be that the hashtags I used simply brought more people in. Possible, but I’ve used every one of those hashtags before. Or could have just been the time of day.

The point I wanted to raise is, who gets to define what is art? Does it boil down to popularity? If that were the case all art would be flowers and sunsets. Certainly, history is full of great art that wasn’t recognized as such for years.  Does the intensity of the effort count? Artists sometimes work on the same piece for years. I myself have pulled out previous works from my portfolio as I’ve learned new things or had new ideas and changed them. Unless an artist loses control over a work it’s arguably never finished.

I think of some of my favorite works that I’ve sweated over for hours and hours, exhibited and won ribbons for; this one took less than fifteen minutes and wasn’t even one I initially thought would go into the portfolio. Mind you, I’m not unhappy about the response it’s received, just surprised. I guess it illustrates that sometimes that initial artistic impulse is the best one; better than sitting around endlessly futzing.

Basic as the snap of a shutter.

-CH

* * *

BTW: The photo art and prose included in any given post are separate creations having nothing to do with each other. Duality and such …

* * *

Likely it hasn't been noticed yet, but the current stream of prose are additional verses to stories already written, already posted. I hadn't intended to overtly tie verses together, preferring to allow everything to exist on their own, but so many people have asked me to keep telling certain stories that it's begun to seem natural to link them. If not a narrative, then a relation. A context.

* * *

Previous verses ...
 (...follow the links)

By Her Lover's Neck
The Prodigal Father

* * *

The Road Out Of Town

“Ah, crap!” she cursed in the middle of a Weather Station song she’d adapted and strummed down hard on the guitar strings, then hard again up. Been a good night up to that point. Had a good crowd listening to her on the sidewalk out in front of the club. Over now, damn it.

She slammed her guitar into its case and snapped it shut as fast as she could and fairly leaped through the door to the club – ticket guy and the bouncer right there at the door and a capacity crowd behind them digging the LOUD alt rock on stage. They both gave her that ‘what the hell’ look and the bouncer accessorized his with a ‘don’t try nuthin’’ arch of his eyebrows, but she was friends with both.

“Let me through!” she shouted over the noise.

Bouncer shook his head. “You know we can’t.”

“There’s somebody out there I desperately need to avoid!”

Ticket guy smirked, asked, “Some guy you dumped last week?”

“Look, it’s my damn father.”

Their eyes widened. Fathers to be avoided was something they shared.

“He’s going to try to drag my ass back to Missouri. Let me through before he figures out this place probably has a back door.”

“Won’t help you,” bouncer said, “It connects right back out onto the street you just left.”

“Guys, I’m desperate here.”

They traded glances, nods. Ticket guy said to bouncer, “Hopefully he comes in; try to hold him up about five minutes. C’mon,” he took her by the arm. Pulled her through behind the bar, then to the little space behind the curtain which backdropped the stage. Drummer, one of her flat mates, gave her a look as they passed. Actually a touch quieter back there because the speakers were pointed in the other direction. Ticket guy said, “Peek through right here; you see him, holler.” Sure enough, her father came through the door less than a minute later, looking frantic. Bouncer placed a meaty open palm across her father’s chest and in her mind she heard him say ‘hold up there’. She looked to ticket guy; ticket guy took a step to the back door and slammed against its crash bar, the warm summer night air flooding into the club’s stale space. “Run like hell,” he told her as she went through, then slammed the door back tight, locked. She did. Stopped just long enough at the street to make sure he hadn’t come back out. Not yet. She really wanted to turn right because it went towards her place, but that would take her back past the club. She turned left. Ran down the street. Left at the first corner but checked first to see if he was there. He wasn’t. Ran another two blocks, then left again, then three blocks, slowing and gasping for breath, then right for two and into the door of her old building. Still wasn’t there. Three flights of stairs to the two-room apartment she shared with three guys and another girl, who looked at her as she burst through.

“Damn, girl!” roommate jumped. “What’s the deal?”

She gulped air. “My father’s here.”

“What, here?

“Showed up outside the club. I think I lost him.”

“Ran all the way here?”

“Pretty much.” She put the guitar down. Leaned back against the door. Collected herself. “I need to use the bathroom,” she said. Their apartment didn’t have one – they shared with the apartment next door where another five people crashed. That one didn’t have a fridge; theirs did. They kept both doors unlocked because they were always moving back and forth. Roommate took her hand and led her next door, peering down to the bottom of the stairwell to see if a dad-looking person were looming there. Wasn’t.

She closed the bathroom door behind her, the two guys who happened to be home looking quizzically as she passed. Splashed sink water on her face, relieved herself on the commode, then sat there a few minutes, slowing her heartbeat. She could hear roommate explaining her situation to the guys. “Tough break,” one said when she emerged, then the other, “glad my old man won’t come after me.”

Back in their apartment, roommate asked, “Do you think he knows where you live?”

She shrugged. “Well, he’s figured out where I’m hanging out. I’m sure if he asks enough questions he’ll find out.”

Roommate said, “Well, shit.”

“Uh-huh.”

“He can’t force you to leave. Can’t force you to do anything.”

“But he thinks he can. Righteous bastard is pretty sure he’s the sword of the Lord.”

Fifteen minutes of silence, neither knowing what to say, She wished she had some whiskey.

Drummer, his set over, came in. Handed her a joint. “From ticket guy,” he said. “Figured you’d need it. Said they got your dad to leave, but he’s been hanging out outside ever since.”

She nodded and took grateful hold of it, but didn’t light up right away, afraid in her current frame of mind it would just make her paranoid.

Drummer sat down next to her. “What are you going to do?”

She sighed. “All I’ve been thinking about.” Then, “I can’t stay here.”

Drummer looked at her warmly. There’d never been anything physical between them – too awkward given their living arrangement, but she knew he liked her. She liked him too. There was a gentleness about him she craved. “Do you think a place across town?” he asked.

“He’d still find me as long as I’m in town, he’ll just keep wandering the music districts.”

“Doesn’t want to let go?”

“He has a set idea about what his daughter should be.”

“Maybe if we both sit down with him?”

“I don’t want to confront him! You don’t know him; he’s not reasonable!”

He nodded, went quiet. She knew he wanted to take her hand and she wanted him to take her hand, wanted to feel that simple affection in the worst way, but neither wanted to be the first to cross that bridge. Finally she said, “I’ve got to get out of town.”

He asked, “Where too?”

She turned to him, needed the eye contact. “Memphis?” she asked.

He said, “Nothing going on in Memphis.”

“LA?”

“Los Angeles is a shit show.”

“Austin?”

“I don’t know anybody in Austin.”

She briefly wondered why that would matter.

He told her, “I know people in New York.”

She hesitated, said, “I don’t need another daddy.”

He said, “Don’t want to be one.”

- CH

* * *

BTW: The photo art and prose included in any given post are separate creations having nothing to do with each other. Duality and such …

* * *

The Prodigal Father

There is a consciousness about warm summer nights in a city. Different from back home, back in the country, back on his split foyer with the patio that overlooked rolling pasture and timber, there at the edge of town. Not that he could describe it. And if he tried, ‘consciousness’ wouldn’t be it. It just feels different, he thought. Had his self-awareness been better tuned, he would have recognized that the background hum of insects and wind was replaced by people and traffic and music, that the glow of moon and stars was replaced by streetlights and neon, that the eeriness accompanying the sight of a lone human being at night is replaced by the eeriness of a street deserted of human beings. As he walked through another of the city’s music districts, he thought how back home on a warm summer night was like being close to the Almighty, while the city sinfully replaced God with Man.

His daughter, whom he was looking for and who, unbeknownst, was only a couple blocks away by then, sitting on the street strumming her guitar, its case open for the occasional couple bucks or few coins people tossed in, had a different take. She found her old home in the country to be claustrophobic and suffocating, a dark pool of hypocritical dogma that she couldn't wait to escape from, but this city was like being plugged into a hot, beating artery of humanity. It was electric, it was visceral, and she loved it.

Months ago she’d cleaned out her accounts, played a last gig at Marshall’s sad little restaurant, told everybody off and hit the road, fast, before anybody could stop her. Came straight here just on its reputation, sold her old beater for extra cash after only a few days, couldn’t find a paying gig but met lots of people scratching by as street artists and joined them. They were her family now, five of them, three guys and two women, crashed in a single loft not far away.

That old beater eventually became her father’s only clue. He’d gone to the Sheriff the day after his daughter left – disappeared to his thinking – to file a missing person’s report and thus get law enforcement looking for her, but was told, no, has to be gone at least 72 hours. “We can check the hospitals, but that’s about all at this point,” the Sheriff told him. And that was another thing! How the heck fire his little county had elected a female sheriff was just to him another sign the world was taking a bad turn.

By the time he went back three days later everyone knew what his daughter had sang and how she’d sang it on the way out the door. How she’d basically told everybody off and to stay away from her. The Sheriff told him, “OK, I can put out an advisory, but not much else. She’s of legal age and she hasn’t done anything wrong.”

“She’s my daughter – she’s just a girl!”

“Sir, she’s 20, she’s a woman, and she basically told everybody, in front of a room full of witnesses, that she was leaving and to leave her alone.”

“I’m sure she didn’t mean it. She was confused about how things should be,” he told her. “It’s like the prodigal son; I just want to find her before she gets hurt.”

Corners of the Sheriff’s face curled up into a slight smile. “You know, sir, the Prodigal Son parable is more about the son who stays home than the son that leaves, blows his wad, and comes home with his tail between his legs.”

His brow furled. “How do you figure?”

“The son that leaves recognizes his transgressions and comes home,” she told him. “The son that stays becomes prideful, and judgmental, and arrogant, and is just as far removed from the father as the son that went away ever was.”

He thought for a moment. “Well, that can’t be!”

“You know, if she doesn’t want to come home you can’t force her; you can’t tell her how to live her life.”

“But I’m her father.”

“Would this be different if she were your son?”

Incredulous, he said, “Of course it would!”

She rolled her eyes. She really didn’t want to send the guy out feeling like she wasn’t doing anything, so she told him, “Look, here’s something I can do – she left in her car, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And it’s her car – your name isn’t on the title or anything?”

He nodded.

“Tell you what; I’ll assign one of my deputies to conduct a VIN search. That way if it shows up for some reason – traffic stop or whatever – you’ll at least know where she is. If he doesn’t find anything right off I’ll have him check every week or so. Okay?”

It took two months, but the VIN eventually showed up in Florida, on a used car lot. It was another month before he learned the dealer had purchased the car at auction in Georgia, then three more months before he traced it back to a dealer in Nashville, and yet another month before he tracked down that guy, who finally dug his records out and told him he’d purchased it outright from the buyer – his daughter, as it happened.

Nashville PD was no help – “Buddy, a thousand new kids show up in this town every week,” they’d told him, but did at least suggest he wander through the city’s music districts; maybe he’d see her.

So he strolled through the various music districts night after night, five nights running now, and had little hope of finding her in this one that didn’t have anything like the country music he’d taught her to play. And that was yet still something else – turns out there were kinds of music played in Nashville other than old time country. That wasn’t right! But as he walked along he looked closely at every street musician he saw, looked into every building he heard music, any kind of music, being played, holding hope by the neck. Terrible, terrible, godless place, he thought, and as terrible as it was he knew exactly what would happen when he found his daughter. Her eyes would widen, he imagined, and the look of despair that this place must be affecting on her would be replaced with a gasp of joy. And she would run to him and throw her arms around his neck and cry ‘I’m soooo sorry, daddy, please take me home, please, please’! He just knew it. She’d see her error and be so happy to come home to him.

Then he rounded the corner and saw her. Across the street, sitting on the curb outside a club, dressed in worn clothes and strumming her acoustic. She wasn’t using the soft, little girl voice he’d taught her to sing with; it was something much gruffer, and not a nice country song, either. He decided not to push too close, just to remain across the street and position himself where she could see him, a strategy he would later decide had been a mistake. Because she looked up, took a few seconds to recognize him, furrowed her brow, gave her guitar strings a couple hard whacks, cursed, and fast as possible threw the guitar in its case, snapped it closed, and disappeared into the club.

- CH

* * *

BTW: The photo art and prose included in any given post are separate creations having nothing to do with each other. Duality and such …

* * *

Sleeping With A New One

The drone was right there, hovering above him. He knew it. In a sky filled with drones sniffing every conceivable human behavior, this one was specifically watching him. It knew to specifically watch him, was programmed to specifically watch him, knew his face, knew his behaviors, knew his patterns, knew his addictions, his blood type, his pheromones. It communicated his every movement, every encounter, every breath for analysis, and if that analysis determined his dissidence, his deviance, that drone and other drones would drop from the sky. And then he would disappear.

When he thought about it logically he consoled himself that, while the drone was specifically watching him, it wasn’t specifically watching only him. The standard Mark XXI surveillance drone deployed by the Authoritarians could easily track several hundred specific targets at once, limited by the range of each target from the drone itself. It might prioritize a given set of targets and follow that set, allowing lower priority targets to wander out of range; those targets would be picked up by other drones, (and hundreds upon hundreds hummed through the sky at any given moment) but perhaps, perhaps not with the same intensity. The drones watched everyone, every living human being on the planet, sniffing at everything everyone did. But he knew – or perhaps just strongly suspected – he fell into the priority set. Knew it because it was the artists, right after the writers, who bore the most scrutiny. They were the most likely to harbor incorrect thoughts that might infect others. Dissident thoughts. And he was an artist.

He was also a dissident. And he was sleeping with the enemy.

He had never put a brush stroke wrong. Not in public, where he was now, along with half a dozen other artists applying their trade in the busy park across from the theater district on a warm summer night. It was here, amidst the stream of people moving in every direction, the artists were permitted to set up shop, demonstrate their talent, whip out quick works in approved styles of approved subjects to delight what audience might stop to watch. And since his works indeed covered approved subjects in the correct styles, and he did them well, and the delighted audience were conditioned to appreciate approved subjects done well in the approved styles, someone would likely buy something. He would smile broadly, and the buyer would smile happily and the passerbys would smile with appreciation of the fine artwork of the approved subject done in the correct style. And the buyer would stroll off into the night carrying under their arm their very own fine art … lie. A complete lie.

In his studio, off the alley down below street level, he could briefly expose the truth. There was no such thing as privacy anymore, of course, but there were methods and there were devices, highly illegal, to avoid detection by the drones. Devices that could subtly jam signals by splitting them into thousands of bits focused away from the target. Times of day the drones were less likely to cover every nook, cranny, and behavior. Situations in which a target could slip into anonymity. None of these methods could be employed very long, nor very often, nor regularly. Maybe just thirty minutes at random moments. Not much, but enough. Enough to for him to incrementally reveal unapproved truths in vibrant, lively styles that undermined the Authoritarian’s delusional and stagnant version of reality.

He believed, along with social scientists who had covertly disseminated well researched papers, that homo sapiens were inherently maladaptive, that they were innately self-destructive, and that just as they had replaced Neandertal and Denisovans, they themselves would be replaced by something new. And that those New Ones were emerging now. The process had already begun.

This observation drove the Authoritarians to frenetic repression. Of all the dissident thoughts the drones sought to detect, this one was the worst. Of course human beings were not inherently self-destructive, or there could not now be over ten billion on the planet. Of course humans were not, could not be maladaptive because humans were the top of the evolutionary pyramid so long as authoritarian principles were maintained. And of course there were no New Ones emerging to take their place. Certainly not! Absolutely positively not!

We would have seen them because we’re smart!

The gentle breeze had just the slightest chill to it as he and the other artists wrapped up for the evening, though, he thought, probably only seemed chilly after the heat of the day. He placed his equipment carefully in satchels, strapped tightly so nothing would be damaged by some clumsy lurch on his part, and strolled away from the lights, towards the less crowded streets, the poorer neighborhoods. The sounds of people thinned out, replaced by the background hum that permeated the city. A half hour walk before his building peaked out from between its neighbors, the window of his third story loft illuminated by the little lamp there. And there, she would be waiting for him, warm and comforting, concurrently translucent and dark. A transcendental being who would blanket him in contentment. He shuddered slightly in anticipation of the love he knew would soon embrace him. No drone had ever detected her – had ever detected any of them. The New Ones seemed to exist on a completely different plane. As the pandemics and the wars and the starvation raged, as the Earth tried to shake off humanity like a dog scratching at fleas, they would be there, impervious.

The art he created in dark spaces had brought her to him. Or, more likely, him to her. Willing himself to her through art on a higher plane.

- CH

A break from the aquarium series to feature this work captured just this weekend. Rare that I exhibit a work so quickly after capturing the original image, and rare that the original image undergoes so little artistic license. This is as close to straight photography as I ever get – just some minimal exposure adjustment in Camera RAW and then very slight sharpening in Photoshop. That’s it. I haven’t even cropped it. I was so pleased with the texture and composition captured by the camera I felt like anything I added on would just spoil it. The photography itself is artsy enough.

iPhone X using Camera+ 2. Post processing in Adobe Camera RAW and Photoshop.

* * *

BTW: The photo art and prose included in any given post are separate creations having nothing to do with each other. Duality and such …

* * *

Coffee And The Raptor

He soared high in the sky on the will of the witch. The black raptor with the golden eyes flew from the little keep on the lake on warm updrafts from the sea, high over the beaches of Abionary, high enough to see the faint outline of Charleon across the narrow Grey Water. He could feel her presence behind his eyes, directing him, seeing everything he saw and possibly more, the bright sun and warm breeze brilliant in her own head as she sat in a dark room of the keep, her consciousness flying with the raptor.

She sent him further over the sea as the King’s distant castle emerged through the haze, disheveled and poorly maintained, a synonym of the King’s reign. Higher, farther until the castle receded to memory, until he hovered between it and the glaring sun, then circled closer, closer. The human bodies on the castle ramparts growing larger, animated, living creatures. A slight course correction, a little closer still, and there in the courtyard he could see the King himself, recognizable by his slovenly appearance and his schlepping little walk. He was flanked by three advisors, each trying to get a word in edgewise as the King waved his arms, clearly engaged in a characteristic rant. Closer still, hiding in the sun’s glare, the raptor focused his eyes, his ears. He could read the facial expressions, could tell who was looking at who and who was trying not to look at anyone, and slowly the syllables came to his ears, indistinct at first and then forming words, phrases, sentences and finally …

“More coffee, hon?” the young waitress accidentally bumped the table as she swirled pleasantly in his direction.

“Eh?” the old man jerked.

“Coffee?” She didn’t wait for him to answer and filled his cup. Stopped when it was full, looked at his wide eyes trying to come back to attention. “Oh, shoot,” her smile evaporated. “You were off at it, weren’t you? I’m so sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”

He shrugged. Went ahead and sipped his coffee; looked out at the blackness beyond the window. “Not to worry – we’re waiting on that new young guy to circle back anyway.”

She nodded. “We think he’s on his way, I guess that’s why I wasn’t thinking.”

He smiled at her, had no desire that she feel self-conscious. She was as he intended.

“What do you think so far,” she asked. “We don’t get a lot like him.”

“No, the old man agreed, “We don’t. I have some ideas for him, but I haven’t decided if he should just go on. Might be better if he did, but I’m not entirely sure yet.”

She nodded, pupils of her eyes rotated to the top of their sockets as she sheepishly backed away, watching his grizzled face with its grey eyes that were already seeking a focus far beyond their little diner.

He sighed when she was gone, sipped his coffee just for the hell of it, let his mind drift, his attention and imagination intertwine, his concentration sharpen to a point.

… He soared high in the sky on the will of the witch …

- CH

BTW: The photo art and prose included in any given post are separate creations having nothing to do with each other. Duality and such …

* * *

Chalkboard Scratches

Two detectives stood together in the misty night and watched Nenge walking towards them from a half block away, stepping through puddles as though their existence were irrelevant. One nudged the other and grunted – they didn’t particularly like Nenge; they were sure she didn’t much like them either. In truth she rarely considered them and considered their deductive skills even less, but that wasn’t it. Mainly they didn’t like her because 1) she was she, 2) she wouldn’t flirt, 3) she treated them like putzes who wanted her to flirt, 4) she got away with crap they couldn’t. “Look at her,” one said to the other. “Bet she’s still tanked.”

So the other replied, “Probably just got to bed when they called her.”

“Why isn’t she the one on the desk this time of night. It’s her case and every one of these things has been discovered about now.”

“Yeah, Captain loves the little bitch for some reason.”

A little pause. “I still think Captain is really her bitch.”

Nenge, of course, saw them as she approached and thought, ‘ah, shit,’ as she did, not feeling the abuse. Her head was still pounding – the vodka shot after the phone call woke her hadn’t helped settle that down. She’d hoped she could just nod to them without eye contact and slide past, but, no, the one detective piped up and said, snide, “You sober about now, Nenge?” not really stating it as a question.

“I dunno, Waddle, you toilet trained yet?”

The one detective grimaced, “Damn it, Nenge, it’s Wendell!”

“Sure thing, Waddle. Nice to see the cleanup crew here,” meaning them. “Where we at tonight?”

“Down the alley, asshole. Screw you, Nenge!”

“You know you’re not my type, Waddle.”

He shouted something else at her, but she was far enough past not to bother hearing it (he’d shouted, ‘what’s that, breathing?’). She turned around the trash bins to the crime scene, roped off with yellow tape. Captain was already there; would’ve been nice to know that. He nodded. She nodded. Photographer was going over the crime scene, flash unit freezing the ugliness in their 5 a.m. faces. She said to him, “Witnesses?”

He said, “Just the homeless woman over there. Claims she didn’t see nothin’, but she was supposedly sleeping between those crates. She’s the one sitting on the ground with the officer standing next to her.”

She surveyed the scene. The victim was scrawled against the dark brick building; not posed, just dumped. Her face had been mutilated postmortem with a four-prong garden trowel, removing her left eye in the process (thought: what does the killer do with the left eyes?) just as the others had been. She’d apparently been completely drained of blood prior to the act, causing her skin to seem unnaturally whiteish-blue. Just as the others had been. And above her body on the dark bricks of the building was scratched five large, thick hashmarks in chalk. (Thought: haven’t all the victims been found against dark brick buildings? Check that.). Five hashmarks. She was the fifth victim.

Captain took a metal flask from his breast pocket; took a swig. Offered it to her. She took it. Bourbon, but cheap stuff, not that either of them had tasted much of the better. He said, “That’s not going on top of much else, is it.”

“Relatively speaking, no, not much.”

“I’m guessing from the way you look you got in late.”

“Following a lead,” she told him, and wasn’t lying. She’d been with the older guy at the diner around the corner from the alley where number four was found last week. He might have seen someone – something – emerging from that alley shortly before the body was found. Something small, and dark, and … weird.

“Anything there?” Captain asked.

“Hard to tell; old guy is down to his few remaining marbles. Seems to spend most of the time at the diner, surviving on coffee. That said,” she added, “I don’t think we’re looking for a dude.”

Captain asked, “Based on something the old guy said?”

She said, “More based on a hunch of what the old guy thinks he saw.” She held up the flask, said, “Lemme borrow this a minute.”

He said, “Don’t lose it.”

She stepped to the homeless woman, nodded to the officer, who got the message and stepped away. She knelt down next to her. “I’m Nenge,” she told her. “You okay?”

The woman nodded quickly. Large, frightened eyes. Twitchy.

“They tell me you were sleeping right over there.”

Nodded again. Nenge held the flask to her. She grabbed quickly for it with both hands, but Nenge held tight. “Don’t tell me you didn’t see anything.”

The woman shook her head. Pulled at the flask.

“No, don’t tell me that.”

For a moment they were locked, eyes as tight as their fists clutched rigidly together on the flask. She whispered, terror struck, “an angel.”

- CH

* * *

BTW: The photo art and prose included in any given post are separate creations having nothing to do with each other. Duality and such …

* * *

A Big Star

He took his time remembering where he was as he drifted awake, drifting slowly first to recognize he was indeed actually awake, drifted from a deliberate effort to fall back asleep to deliberately cracking open his eyes. Once accomplished he entertained a notion he was in jail, waking on a tiny cot, in a tiny room with a tiny window high on the wall at his feet. He fantasized what crimes he might be accused of; his dodging the authorities and the great chase which ultimately captured him. But the door collapsed the fantasy. A flimsy, pressed wood door with a cheap doorknob that may or may not hold an equally cheap lock. With the collapse of that last dreamy illusion, ‘reality’ was the only option. So he remembered the long drive towards Hollywood, stumbling exhausted into the diner with the strangely familiar people outside the little town in the middle of nowhere, then being gratefully led to the tiny cot in this tiny room for the opportunity to just close his eyes and sleep. Just for a tiny bit.

He remembered the free grilled cheese sandwich.

When he emerged from the little room and stepped sheepishly from the hall and looked through the diner to the big windows he remembered the darkness that drove him there in the first place. And it was still dark. That, or it was dark again. The short order cook stood and looked at him, spatula in hand. He wasn’t the same guy that had been there before and had made him the grilled cheese sandwich, but he looked, well, sort of the same, cut from the same cloth, and again, so familiar. The waitress turned from the older guy in one of the booths by the window and smiled, said, “Well, hey there, sleepyhead!” She also was different from the waitress who had met him earlier, gave him coffee and helped him to the tiny cot, in the tiny room. She was younger, blonde where the older woman was ginger, and holy crap she was gorgeous. She didn’t seem familiar but did strike him as a particular ‘type’. “I was starting to wonder,” she said.

“It’s still night?” he asked.

She looked over the shoulder at the windows, back to him, shrugged. “Want some coffee? Something to eat?”

He looked around the diner. Only a few customers at the tables. Seemed to him the older guy in the booth the waitress had been serving coffee was the same older guy in the same booth as when he got there, and he seemed to be watching, calculating. “Oh,” he hemmed, hawed, “I need to be getting back on the road.”

Waitress said, “Can’t travel on an empty stomach.”

He began moving, unsteady, towards the door, balance still waking up. “I’ve troubled you enough. I’ll be fine.”

“That’s right,” she said, “You’re off to California.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Going to be a big star,” she teased.

He smiled, “Just checking it out.”

“Safe travels,” she said, “If you get lost, just try to make your way back here.”

He nodded, smiled some more, pushed through the door. Found his car. He looked up and down the road and recalled that he’d come from that way, so he turned the vehicle the other way, up the street. He couldn’t shake the feeling it wasn’t the right road, that somehow the darkness had sucked him down a direction that wasn’t what he’d intended. And it was still the same dark engulfing his car as he drove slowly, further into town. Not dark as in ‘night’, but more like a dark closet filled with coats that he couldn’t see through. He could vaguely sense houses and buildings along sides of the street, but the streetlights were so low to the ground, barely above the hood of his old car, as if to illuminate the pavement itself but not the world around it. Sometimes a window would be brightly lit, no shades, people inside their homes, moving about, talking, living. Then in only a mile or two he seemed to be coming to what looked like the town square; bright windows in storefronts surrounding a courthouse. People inside conversing, gesturing, stuff going on, people mulling about outside, sometimes watching. Even the courthouse had big, unshaded windows with scenes unfolding behind each one. The street seemed only to move in right angles around the square and offered no way out other than the way he’d come. He drove around, slowly, twice, then, since no vehicles were following him, he stopped in the street and looked around. Every face in every window had a familiarity; maybe not something he recognized but something … maybe typecast. He noticed that the windows were of all different sizes, some huge, some just big, some small enough that a person had to stand right in front to see anything. But all of them, well, almost all, were of the same ratio. They were all roughly one by two.

Then something clicked in his head.

Back up the dark street. He went as fast as he dared given the darkness, the low hung streetlights illuminating only the pavement. He thought now how they resembled the tiny lights in the aisles of movie theaters. That’s when he realized the darkness was less a visual sensation than a feeling of claustrophobia, a lack of depth. He whipped into the diner’s parking lot, its windows exactly the same one by two ratio as those around the town square. The cook and the waitress were both leaning against the counter as he burst through the door, the older guy in his booth, watching. As though they’d expected him.

“I know who you are!” he half shrieked to the cook. “You’re that guy. You and that other cook too were both in that movie, ‘Chalkboard Scratches’! You were those two cop guys always there at the crime scenes! You were always cutting up with each other, and stuff; it was funny.”

The cook said, “Detectives. We were detectives, young man.”

“I remember!”

“We only had a handful of lines, played against the lead. Not funny, just some humor as otherwise it was a very tense movie.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said excitedly. “What are you doing here? I have so many questions!” The waitress nodded towards a stool and pushed a cup of coffee in front of it. He sat.

The waitress smiled, said, “I thought you were only going to check it out?”

“Yeah, where should I go? Who can I talk to?”

The cook leaned forward. “Son, did you ever see either of us in anything else?”

He thought about it. “No.”

“Yeah, no, that’s because there wasn’t any, or not much anyway. If we’d have made it, we’d be somewhere else right now. We all would be. But as our dreams of stardom died, we found ourselves here. Here in Hollywood. This Hollywood.”

The waitress lightly touched his arm, took him in her eyes. “And my dreams,” she said, “Made the same trip you are. Or were.”

- CH