The Transparent Eyeball

These are the nights I’ll want to remember, these are the nights I won’t forget. The group of us, backs to the elements and the shivering trees, huddling around a small pit of merry embers. Faces lit, wicked shadows dancing from cheek to mouth to nose and back into the flames where they belong. A bag of sweet-smelling marshmallows, a bar of shiny chocolate, a box of fresh graham crackers, and a handful of long, thin branches make for a fantastic dessert. Inhaling more smoke than air, our eyes water up and we turn away just for a moment to relieve the rosy burn of woodsmoke. Looking up, where the smoke is already fading, we see a navy sky, while tiny scraps of grey and golden ash dance around the fire above us. They fade in and out of the dark, like little puppet ghosts, listening to us chatter and having a little party of their own.

If I die young, bury me in satin.
Lay me down on a bed of roses.
Sink me in the river at dawn,
Send me away with the words of a love song.

The sharp knife of a short life,
Well, I’ve had just enough time.

~ The Band Perry

I want to say somewhere: I’ve tried to be forgiving. And yet. There were times in my life, whole years, when anger got the better of me. Ugliness turned me inside out. There was a certain satisfaction in bitterness. I courted it. It was standing outside, and I invited it in.

~ Nicole Krauss

Strangers, closer. 

The two of you make eye contact,

feel the unsaid obligation to make small talk. 

You clutch your plastic cup more tightly,

watch your drink quiver from the center.

But the more he speaks, the more you listen.

Every unfamiliar gesture of the hands, every odd pronunciation

tugs at some long-forgotten heartstring.

The way he slurs his R’s, trips over his K’s, 

lands so perfectly on his T’s.

The dimple when he said the word, “Perk.”

As the party sways around you, you stay grounded.

You’re not so much fascinated by the things he says-

work, small talk, the weather, small talk talk talk…-

but by the way he says them.

And like any good faker, you smile and nod appropriately,

not to listen, just to hear.

If at large gatherings or parties, or around people with whom you feel distant, your hands sometimes hang awkwardly at the ends of your arms - if you find yourself at a loss for what to do with them, overcome with sadness that comes when you recognize the foreignness of your own body - it’s because your hands remember a time when the division between mind and body, brain and heart, what’s inside and what’s outside was much less. It’s not that we’ve forgotten the language of gestures entirely. The habit of moving our hands while we speak is left over from it. Clapping, pointing, giving the thumbs up : all artifacts of ancient gestures. Holding hands, for example, is a way to remember how it feels to say nothing together. And at night, when it’s too dark to see, we find it necessary to gesture on each other’s body to make ourselves understood.

~ Nicole Krauss

I knew this girl named Detroit Cool
Who lived up in my block.
At 6 foot 2 her knee socks high
The class of 80 rocks.
She got hips that sway for you,
She got legs that never really stop.

She asked me if my mamma dressed me,
And I do like I should.
From East Delror and fifty first
I’m on this neighbourhood.
She just smiles and says to me,
I just want to know if we are good

~ Daniel Powter