i digest life. i put it my mouth, push it around, chew it a couple times and swallow. or at least, that is what i feel sometimes. But the instrument for the dissection of life isn't my mouth, I devour the world with my eyes. Small fragments of life swirl in front of my pupils as my brain etches the images into the filofax of my mind. An old man on the bus. A cemetery on a pale winter afternoon. Shadows in the street by the train tracks. Sunlight flowing over the skyline. each memory saved, filed and numbered for later. instantanious moments where the simplexity and beauty of what the word life is about. small moments where everything for a flighty second is perfect and whole. i write trying to capture them, but the are never as clear or homogenious as the second they are born. nothing can ever match the present, but i catch myself still trying to record something that can never be caught.

one such moment. 12/31/02

it is the last day of the year. icy air presses my chest as crisp plumes of my breath parades around my head. i wind down deserted roads as grey squirrels bounce between the gravestones that stretch out farther than the horizon. On all sides, there is a solitute and calmness that makes me almost joyful. I want to give something to the silent lurkers around me. The dead and the creatures–the squirrels and geese. My lungs burst forth with singing of a small trifle of songs written by a band from milwaukee. Some how the words fit the light, air and texture of the moment. Another second of encompassing completeness passes me and becomes a memory to make me grin.