Yes, this is a blog

Fog duty. It was his turn to go. Had it been twelve months already? He'd only gone three times before and the first was before they had implemented the draft. No one volunteered anymore. Everyone who was able played their part whether they wanted to or not. It wasn't long after it had started, that first time. He remembered a curiosity as morbid as it was insatiable. Once someone had gone out there and come back he knew it was an experience he had to have for himself. A young man with little attachment and a daredevil streak. The perfect candidate. They went out always in groups of three, each tethered to one another by a steel cable that trailed to base several thousand feet behind. The suits were specially built with a Kevlar overlay and a mounted flashlight and camera on both sides of the visors. He felt like Iron Man inside it. He felt impervious, at least he did then. Now he was older, now he knew better. That first trip ended with his co-worker tripping, falling on his fa...

There was a prevailing sentiment at that time that things were just about as bad as they could get. This was in large part because a lot of the old timers in the community had passed on to Glory, and had taken with them the remembrance of a generation that could still speak to the days way back of famine and poverty and violent dissension the likes of which the children today scarcely have the vernacular to describe. These kids with their engorged sense of privilege. Their antiseptic shelters and computer screens. Always looking at themselves, always eaten up with status and whatever trends the wind blows their way. We've raised a fallow crop that could never withstand the breed of adversity that was around back then. Must've been why people felt the way they did. That the world was going to seed and that somehow when they were young it was better. But that wasn't really true, not entirely. It wasn't even true that all the old timers felt different. In fact a lot of the...

A close friend. She has no name. Clothing she has in wardrobes stocked, multitudes of configuration and pattern. Hair in all varieties of style. Color, cut, curl. Looks for every season, whims with every reason painted on an opaque visage in rouge and shimmer. Pieces carefully charted and measured in some always-shifting optimal pursuit like the meticulous work of engineers revising their mass marketed product for annual release. It never ends, the tinkering and deliberation. The meters that are ticked and the dials turned. The thought the engine that drives existence, a memetic virus burrowing comfortably in your conscious. Once the door is opened, there her home will always be. A live-in house guest custom made to serve. Her body. Contorting, distending. The face a mosaic of parts stolen from a catalog in constant update. A billboard, a commercial, a person picked out from a crowd. The puzzle pieces move as oil stirs in water, quick to morph and disseminate after holding form for an ...

At the seams of the coastland where cratered mud roams the pathways and the truculence of certain near amphibious bird species is met with laughing intrigue and breadcrumbs they sojourned, the two. On a task called exile or leisure or vocation. Marked on their schedules a dedication to step off the wheel on which they trudged and abscond together to a thing near sacramental in its colloquial reputation. That banded rite as old almost as mankind itself. Once it had been performed for subsistence only but now it was the relaxation of many who pine for the stringent customs of a bygone era reprised. For unfiltered air and sun and stinking shore. Reacquainting themselves with a discipline they might not ever have to know, a luxury that can abrade a man's contentment the way the leak of a busted faucet can set his mind to ruin. An itch. The single, small yearning of a muscle so atrophied it could scarcely be said to still be in the body at all. It was there, a remnant instinctual, but n...

But if I go to the east, he is not there; if I go to the west, I do not find him. When he is at work in the north, I do not see him; when he turns to the south, I catch no glimpse of him. But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold. My feet have closely followed his steps; I have kept to his way without turning aside. I have not departed from the commands of his lips; I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my daily bread. But he stands alone, and who can oppose him? He does whatever he pleases. He carries out his decree against me, and many such plans he still has in store. That is why I am terrified before him; when I think of all this, I fear him. God has made my heart faint; the Almighty has terrified me. Yet I am not silenced by the darkness, by the thick darkness that covers my face. (Job 23: 8-17)

It was the kind you'd use for long distance travel. Thick wheels set close together on a sturdy frame and a seat perched high, level with the steering frame which went down and curved at the sides like a ram's horns. You gripped the vertical handles and squeezed the brakes, the triggers. On a sharp decline it felt like straddling an arrow. Perfectly aimed and threaded into a gust of wind. A dry schooner with no propulsion but the strength of your legs and the curvature of the road. The long road. Her coach used to call them "Long Winders" as a joke. The kind of person whose discipline was performing a single activity, usually basic, for vast quantities of time. Much longer indeed than what any sane person would think reasonable. Marathon cyclists, runners, swimmers. They'd often have the same sort of sandblasted features to their faces. The winnowed brow and squinted eyelids and sun-soaked, leathery texture to the face. It's how you might tell them apart when ...

In the spring there are dogwood trees that blossom. Blossom and wilt thereafter. Their alabaster petals plume outward and spread round and tremble under the wind. April's snowfall. The rains that fall water the roots and they bloom first when it warms. Rain that pounds and hammers; that shears the white foliage away and turns them green. Limbs assimilated to rest of the emerald spectrum that in time fades as well. So swift they come and they go. It's said such brevity calls us to greater appreciation of the here and now. The gift of the day. The hour in which we live, while we live. But it is easy to forget. The seduction of the next moment and the next after, leaving you myopic in their trailing dust. They are a matter of expectation and worry. And behind them are things that pass away irretrievable. To appreciate the here and now. "Seize the day." That is the challenge, the goal. But there is another side to that coin. When you take the hard look at the temporal, ...