Steps that Rap like Rain, Guest Hosting for #WQWWC

Tags

#WQWWC, Abstract, Black and White, Cinema, Existence, Experimental, Florida, Grief, Hope, Nature, Night, Ocean, Photography, Quotations, Sunset, Water, Writing

I gaze into jukebox skies.

Sun-blotted days have bleached my shoulders. My mane is turning white. Hunch-backed, I grasp a scallop-shelled walking-stick, ambling along on driftwood legs.

“My characters are drifters and searchers and they look for something. The journey is a state of mind for them.” ―Wim Wenders

Details peel from my face and trickle away into the citrus breeze.

(Sometimes, I can hear atomies skitter across the metalled sands of apathy.)

“The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” ―John Milton

A froth of dinoflagellates sparks electric blue ‘round my stubble-feet. Each step is measured, defying suction as I trace along the arrow of time.

“It all looks the same. You can’t imagine anything anymore. Above all, you can’t imagine any change. I became estranged from myself. All I could imagine was going on and on like this forever.” ―Alice in the Cities, 1974, Written by Wim Wenders and Veith von Furstenberg

(There’s a black maw gaping in the back of my brain.)

“Today was a gloomy, rainy day without a glimmer of sunlight, like the old age before me. I am oppressed by such strange thoughts, such gloomy sensations; questions still so obscure to me are crowding into my brain- and I seem to have neither power nor will to settle them.” ―Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights

I used to retreat into the zebra-striped dusk beneath the sagging porch of childhood. Heaps of detritus gathered ‘round like friends- termite-mounds of frass, sparrow bones, and mulberry seeds.

(The subtle sounds of decay became my life’s refrain.)

“Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I’m one.” ―Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

Mewling cries swarm like midges inside my weltering mind. I turn away from the virason gasping off the sea.

Flailing like a killdeer, I struggle toward the lavender dunes. A wide yellow moon grins overhead.

“I don’t take care of myself. I think, if I don’t take care of myself and I sit still and I don’t move, maybe they’ll forget about me. But then I’m scared of that too, because I think maybe if I sit there too long, maybe when I want to move, I won’t be able to move.” ―Mikey and Nicky, 1976, Written/Directed by Elaine May

Memory microfilms at the margin: Coarse sheets forming little mountain ranges of wet, crimson-black spires. Cloven hands of ivory clacking against shiny metal bars. Hillocks of pillows burning like red coals against a dried-leaf body.

“Sweet is sweet, bitter is bitter, hot is hot, cold is cold, color is color; but in truth there are only atoms and the void.” ―Brian Greene, Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe

I can hear the wail of a train from across the lagoon, punctuating the still-water-night. The cloistered whine of mosquitoes quickly throttles the noise. And then, the sound of my quickening steps.

“A lot of people enjoy being dead. But they are not dead, really. They’re just backing away from life. Reach out. Take a chance. Get hurt even. But play as well as you can. Go team, go! Give me an L. Give me an I. Give me a V. Give me an E. L-I-V-E. LIVE! Otherwise, you got nothing to talk about in the locker room.” ―Harold and Maude, 1971, Written by Colin Higgins, Directed by Hal Ashby

Steps that begin to rap like rain. And thunder through the frenzied lights of the howling causeway. Steps that are heading north.

“I’m glad we went to the Rhine. For the first time I see myself…as someone who’s gone through a certain time, and that time is my story. [Pausing] That feeling is quite comfortable.” ―Kings of the Road (Im Lauf der Zeit, “In the Course of Time”), 1974, Written/Directed by Wim Wenders

Determined to run into myself again.

“We all talked about leaving, but only one of us, one morning, without a word to a soul, actually left.” ―I Vitelloni (“The Bullocks/The Layabouts”),1953, Written/Directed by Federico Fellini
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A little over a year ago, I traveled north and did something I’d never done before. Toured a series of universities.

Here’s to new beginnings.

“I have to go on makin’ a livin’…so I can die.” ―Pickup on South Street, 1953, Written/Directed by Samuel Fuller

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This effort was created for Marsha Ingrao’s Always Write: Writer’s Quotes Wednesdays Writing Challenge (#WQWWC).

This week’s theme: New Beginnings.

I invite you to accent your own post with a quotation or two that expresses your own sense of New Beginnings.

Here is further information on How to Participate in the Wednesday Writers Challenge.

Previous contributors to last week’s theme, Celebration:

• It’s Tradition by Myrna Migala
• Here Comes the Holiday Season by Tina Schell
• A very Merry Christmas by Sadje
• Beach Walk Reflections by Frank who included some music via YouTube Fantasia on For All the Saints

Thank you for drizzling by,

Autumn Jade

Song by Improved Sound Limited, from Kings of the Road

Another Twilight Hanging

Tags

Black and White, Experimental, Florida, Moon, Nature, Night, Noir, Photography, Prose, Thoughts, Water, Writing

I saw a coyote last night. There was a tattered hole in his left ear. I almost missed him, perched there on the porous sidewalk, his lemon eyes glazed in the orange glow of the streetlight, his tumbleweed tail thumping soundlessly.

I shuffled on, my shins swishing like plastic bags.

I noticed a glint of black blood on the pavement. Just a drop or two.

They shoveled up the rest of my remains, yesterday morning. I listened to profanities slung by the strident tongues of the Grey Men. They chipped at the concrete. I listened to their shovels scrape and scratch.

“Smells like hell but at least I’m not coughin’ up flies,” one said to the other, his shovel dripping.

“I ain’t seen a single maggot,” the other agreed, and nodded, digging back into the heap.

There was a groan and a metallic suction and crunch accompanied by the blinking back-up beeps of the garbage truck.

I felt a seizure welling up.

A mockingbird attempted to conquer the din. Ten years swam by. Hoarse and vanquished, I watched him fly against the watery-brown sky and vanish.

I once held a baby bird, a couple summers ago. The tiny creature, lighter than a fistful of sunflower seeds, quivered violently with life and burned my hand. I dropped it. Just before the cat pounced, I plucked it up again and set it in the sink.

Its eyes, like two drops of midnight, leered up at me, its pale neck of string nearly snapping- and with a peculiar rictus grin splitting its face apart, it commenced its screams for sustenance.

No harm done.

Some scraps from my corpse never quite made it into the truck. Some pieces were never going to budge.

A slurry of vultures descended for inspection. They poked and rasped and then looked at each other in disgust.

I watched them shrug and mount the bilge-water sky in a flurry of razor-black wings. Even the scavengers reject my remains.

The sun is pooling on the horizon now, in the garden of ales. Bottles glitter, poking up from the mud like stakes. Another wistful twilight hanging, the air sharp with the scent of broken twigs.  The faceless doll in the background keeps spinning, dangling from the thumb of a branch.

The moon sweeps over. Distant lights yawn. The clouds are shorn by a gust of oven wind.  I see the coyote again, stretching in the middle of the road, his ear whistling. I whisper a muffled apology to him- though, I know not why.

He gives me a lopsided look, his lemon-ball eyes in slits. A carnivorous smile swims across his inky lips.

A hiss of headlights reflects on a fleck of bone. I become encompassed in a warm deluge. I stare up from the bottom and allow myself to drown.

The ripples above never seem to end.

“Every Sin is an Attempt to Fly…”

Tags

Black and White, Florida, Night, Noir, Photography, Portrait, Quotations, Thoughts

“Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always gotten there first, and is waiting for it.”
– Yousuf Karsh

“Night does not show things, it suggests them.”
– Brassaï

“Every sin is an attempt to fly from emptiness.”
– Simone Weil

“An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?”
– Rene Descartes

“Very hopeful faces always seem on the edge of despair.”
– Alasdair Gray, 1982 Janine

Coughing Crickets

Tags

Black and White, Moon, Nature, Night, Noir, Photography, Poem, Prose, Writing

Gasping moonlight signals through a cloudy ocean beard.

Still bodies of flies and dragonflies glint, clinging to the cool, glass skin of dimming florescent lights.

Beneath an orange orb of sodium vapour the glinting lawn looks like a nest of razorblades.

Crickets loom slick and black with the dank breath of December fog nestled on their backs. They sound like coughing hinges, tonight.

Disheveled Night- Through Peccable Eyes

Tags

Abstract, Black and White, Experiemental, Night, Night Photography, Noir, Photography, Poetry, Rain, Urban

Disheveled night

To peer through peccable eyes

The restive rebel

Curled up inside

This sweating mind

Warbling words

Driveling through a soggy grin

Tepid brow nestling into the grit

Of neon-washed, city-skin

Uvid and mucid

This life therein

Dank and dainty

Delicate, it drifts

Dastardly light

That sweeps and swims

In coal-coloured eyes

That leer with a limp

And in smoky shame

Still long to live

A Shrewd Grief

Tags

Abstract, Art, Black and White, Digital, Drawing, Experimental, Grief, Ink, Introspection, Nature, Night, Photography, Poetry, Rain, Thoughts

  Barbed malevolence

A shrewd and blunt Grief

That his somber Absence

Should foster such Relief

Porcine Wings and Flower Skulls

Tags

Abstract Photography, Drear, Night, Night Photography, Photography, Poetry, Rain, Thoughts

Door swinging in wind

Waiting for the midnight train-

Possum waddles by

In street-puddles swims the moon

Water oily black

Wandering in rain-sloshed thought

Roads brushed in silence

In the grimy windowpane-

Fog and memory

Leering Darkness

Tags

Black & White, Florida, Musing, Night, Night Photography, Photography, Solitude, Story, Thoughts, Urban, Walking, Writing

After days and years of solitary walks, meandering along the sea, or through the quiet forest glade, delving into the chasms and crevices of my belladonna-mind, the leering darkness provoked a change, and I found myself upon a nocturnal stroll of the urban kind.

I ambled along amidst the jubilant bar life, the incandescent window displays and charming, but dolefully indifferent, advertisements whoring for a sale.

I trotted along the night-washed sidewalk, myriad globs of smashed gum wads catching the glow of a nearby streetlamp. They glinted in perfect circles punching through the dark like stars to light my way.

Framed by the passing headlights, the silhouettes of Panhandlers stalked along like jackals looming near a bleeding kill they could never quite reach.

Moody Indie-music lumbered out from the dreary maw of the newest haunt. The sound mingled with the hum of fans, the buzz of neon signs, and the silent boisterous banter of the chaos within-

Words joggling and spurting, desperate to touch (with lucidity, with meaning), but always guarded- and so naively off-key, like hesitant eyes that rise out of cadence and fail to meet (and so sabotage what might have been). I walked on.

Solitude followed me as I shuffled through smiling countenances (grinning teeth obscuring the self-doubt and brittle sadness within) glaring through the darkness. I walked effortlessly, gliding along in my pinstripe hat and my animated thoughts. In the cover of the leafy weald, or in a circus theatre, yes, Solitude always became me.

And I was content. Aloneness was never barren or hollow, but resolute and kind. It fostered reason and curiosity, the creative mind like perennial autumn flare ruffled by the rejuvenating wind, fresh and crisp and ludic. Aye, I was alone, but never dreary. I had determined to avoid the infection of loneliness.

But I did come to know Madness, before the wall of mud and sticks finally gave way and the onslaught of my own wild thoughts were released to flow free. Before I knew the bliss it was to embrace my Self.

My gritty step faded. The crowds, the bars, the panhandlers, all dissolved behind me. The charming signs, the decorative lights and floating music, all wafted away. I was free, and I was lively, and I was going somewhere, gliding along rivulets of thought- and always by my side along the way, my coy and reticent friend, Solitude.

Goodnight,

Autumn Jade

The Sapphire Sea

Tags

Black-tip Shark, Florida, Moon, Night, Ocean, Photography, Sea, Sharks, Story, Twilight, Whale

I want to continually drink in these flitting days. The way the dawn beams through the water, the sight of wild energy, a lambent, emerald green looming through the visage of a wave, before it crashes into sound and vanishes- it is within these moments I thrive.

I bequeath myself to the sea, the fuel of all my passion. I relate to the little crab, with his legs of gold and eyes of grey swirled marble. I merge with the brine, and tumble with the waves-

I tumble so much so with the waves that I now must relate a wee story. Please forgive the abruptness.

It was a fine evening, the rosy moon beginning to climb above the milky horizon. The enveloping Blue of twilight was swallowing the last languid gasps of neon sunset, becoming just a blur of memory, as I swam away from my companion, a little black-tip shark. After an hour of swimming alongside him, as he darted fast and swiftly in and out of the scintillating ball of tiny, flashing fish, desperately spitting out from the glazed surface of the sea, it was now time for our farewell. It seemed he understood, and he glided close, his dorsal fin slicing through the glass surface as he drifted right beside me, the way a dolphin might in a film. It was mournful to part, but we both had to move on. Our worlds so vastly different, it was truly phenomenal that we were able to abide in harmony together for so long.

So, feeling doleful and forlorn, I flippered downshore, cheering myself by imagining I was some sort of jubilant otter, periodically diving, kicking hard, then up for air, and down again. Sometimes I did a little roll-over at the surface and chirped. After an hour torn in half, I had finally swum to the point I desired, right in front of the boardwalk, where, oh eventually, I would fall out of the ocean, begrudgingly rise to my feet, and wincingly meander back into terrestrial life.

However, the night was truly fine, a great stream of ashen moonlight kissing the Sapphire Sea. Still imagining I was indeed some sort of sea-creature, I allowed the waves to carry me, toss me, slosh me about in the swash, nearly beaching me on shore; and then I would manage to flipper back into the depths. Over and over I did this.

At last, my moonlit silhouette emerged from the tangy brine, and I puttered behind some fellow beach-goers as they were departing. Clambering the boardwalk, still in a deep reverie, I was astounded when a male Yorkshire accent broke through the chiming of the waves, “Was that you out there in the water?!”

“Oh why yes, I was swimming with some sharks a bit. It was groovy,” I replied with an invisible grin that hopefully beamed through the darkness.

The voice boomed again, “I thought you were a li’l whale!”

(The compliment of my life)

“Oh yes?! There were many sharks too. Did you see them?” I asked.

“Was it cool?” he asked.

“Oh yes very cool. Swimming with sharks always is.”

“No, the water. Cool, was it?”

Obviously, he had not gone in for a dip. Even in the dark, I noticed he was wearing socks and sandals. Never….in Florida, socks? Oh my…and they seemed to be almost knee-high.

“Oh well, it felt fabulous, just right.”

Then his wife chortled, “Oh this is the whale? Nice to meet you. Goodbye!”

And they dashed off, vaporizing into the night.

An astonishing, and deeply gruntling way to end the evening. I reflect back now with tears of tender joy that I was indeed mistaken for a whale….life is too glorious!

Many ecstatic cheers,

Autumn Jade