there came a day

when he tired of writing

not knowing why he wrote

uncertain where it was going

so he decided to quit

to free his spirit

to pursue other passions

to finally find his true calling

but he found himself flummoxed

unsure where to begin

and thus

picking up pen and paper

he set forth

recording the challenges

aspirations

and details

of his struggle

1/12/2025

That recipe I make

Slow-cooked lamb roast

Infused with lemon and garlic

Splashed lavishly with olive oil,

I kept that when I broke up

With the dark-haired man

With deep-brown eyes

His love of Korean cinema lingered

Long after he was gone

And I'll never eat Romano

And not think of him

Sometimes fondly

Sometimes with a deep pain

He left many imprints on my life

From my French sailor

Who forever made me see

The romance in a sunset

Sometimes I hum that song

The one he used to sing to me

When everything was closing in

And I found it hard to breathe

Every bike ride or playground

Reminds me of that summer

Where we frolicked

Hands intertwined

In the heady, fragrant breeze

Eyes only for each other

He's in every sunset now

I can't eat donuts

Without remembering

Those ones I ate in Berlin

In the freezing winter wind

With my German lover

His coat wrapped around me

As he kissed the sugar from my face

And when I walk in cemeteries

I think of when we strolled

Hand-in-hand through that place

Sombre and yet beautiful

The autumn leaves swirling

On the hibernating ground

I see him still betwixt the headstones

They shaped me with their taste

Their passion, their dislikes

And though these men are gone

Their impression here remains

And oft I ponder to myself

What habits linger still

That they have kept from me

There’s a time when each of your parents picks you up, puts you down and never picks you up again. Now, I can recall many first and last milestones in my life. But even with the finality of this, I can’t remember the precise day or circumstances associated with my parents putting me down for the last time. I doubt they would have been able to either. As the youngest, my folks knew that picking me up in their arms would cease at some point like it did for my siblings. It's inevitable. As happens with all kids, we just got too big. Continuing with this gesture was unnecessary due to our independence or too taxing on our parents’ body.

I don’t think my mother or father conscientiously acknowledged that, “After this, I’m not picking up any of my kids ever again.” So, physically releasing us from their arms for the last time wasn’t a premeditated incident captured for prosperity because it was routine. Mundane actions end up blending together to form uneventful days which turn into weeks then months then quickly passing years. Children grow so fast; not everything is a watershed moment, worthy of recalling by either party involved. Without an anchoring occasion, such as a birthday, holiday or developmental achievement providing emotional attachment, generic details get lost.

I heard this “There’s a time…” statement following my mom’s funeral in 2015, almost nineteen years after my father’s unexpected death. It resonated with me since I was still in mourning. But then I started thinking about it from a different angle.

There are many pictures of my parents holding their kids and grandkids. We matured and became self-sufficient while Mom and Dad grew old and became frail. So, at a certain point, lifting any of us off the ground wasn’t an option. I realized, although not physically able to, our parents continually raised our spirits with their words of encouragement and hoisted us up by celebrating our triumphs.

Neither ever put any of us down when we failed. They did their best to ease the pain associated with our heartbreaks. They literally dusted us off and were a constant source of support as we endured the inevitable lows of life. Picking up a child is comforting, but temporary. A parent always being there is impactful and everlasting.

We had ample time to say goodbye to Mom. At the end, her mind and body were worn, but she always smiled when her family came to visit, even if she couldn’t recall our names. It was reassuring seeing her happy to see us. And now, even after all the years, my parent’s presence still lifts me, reminding me everything will be alright. I’m grateful that to this day, they’ve never let me down.

Today my Mom would have been 100 years old. Often we enjoyed teasing her about the big celebration required for reaching that milestone. She never believed it would happen, and it didn’t. Except for the party I imagine my Dad and God are hosting today.

Her song is ended, but her melody lingers on.

My Aunt Cecilia loved to read. She loved old movies and she loved above all else, her family.

My Aunt Cecilia had an iron gate for a mind. Impenetrable, full of thoughts that she sometimes shared through sharp wit and a laugh that grabbed at your attention no matter where you were in the room.

That was my Aunt Cecilia.

Then one day, my favorite Aunt of mine found the trap door in her iron gated mind and fell through it.

You see, when you are diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's at the age of 58, you cannot help the impending fall. I remember when she told us like it was yesterday, not 10 years ago.

I remember because afterward her daughter and my mom (her sister) began to talk about what to do next. Aunt Cecilia had begun showing signs of some sort of decline for the last 2 years. She could not be a teacher anymore, she forgot what the lessons were the moment she wrote them, she could not follow you in your car because she forgot the directions upon reading them, or that she was following you in the first place. She could not ring your lunch up in the school cafeteria because she forgot how to work the cash register...

I remember so much, so vividly during this time. But mostly I remember my Aunt Cecilia's face. Her face seemed to crumple like tissue paper, and her body hunched inward, as if to warm herself from an onslaught of a cold front.

The cold reality that she would not remember much longer.

And now... 10 years later, my Aunt Cecilia has forgotten she was ever sad in the first place. She rocks back and forth in a nursing home while I feed her, her lunch. She hums to no music and sucks on her teeth in a smacking rhythm in her wheelchair. She mumbles words and looks up brightly when she sees my mom, but when she sees me...

She sees right through me. I talk to her about my day. I read her stories and ask questions that I know I will never get an answer from.

I... I... I try to remember for her.

I try, because what are we but the experiences and memories of our past? I think it might be the only way to even envision a future, by knowing your past.

I have never formally said goodbye to my Aunt Cecilia, but little by little with each visit, I see that I have been saying goodbye, over and over. I will never not be grateful for my visits and time with her, even now as a shell of her former self.

But even still, with the memory of her old self winking at me in my dreams, I say goodbye and hope that if there is a next life, she will be wholly herself,

her whole life long.

We had less time than I ever thought possible. I never dreamed that we would be saying goodbye before we turned 40, before our little girl was even five years old. We were still planning, still dreaming, but our time together was cut short, like a song that ends unexpectedly on a sour note that just feels wrong.

But I can still hear your melody. I hear it in our daughter’s laugh, in her conversations with you in her bedtime prayers. I see it when she cuddles up next to the dog and buries her face in his fur, when she puts her little arm around her friend to console him when he cries. I feel it when she throws her arms around my neck and squeezes me tight, when her cheek touches mine and our tears mingle together.

It breaks my heart that we won’t celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary together, that you won’t be here to see our daughter’s graduation or walk her down the aisle. With every part of my being, I miss you. But when I listen closely, I know you’re still with us. Your melody lingers on through the little life that we made together, and I will hold on tightly to those last notes until my last breath.

Hardly what it seems

Twelve A.M across scowling sheets,

Frowns repeat in strong shrieks

You sing like gentle spring

Droplets,

Barricades in your esophagus

Quiver-

I sing in shattered

Consonants,

Palisades pierce my tongue

Bitter-

Smooth blood you left

Unpaved,

Pencil shavings spread across

Your desk

Clogged shower drain-

Sing another week

When summer comes

In studio apartment dreams

Stinging echoes of rusty pipes

Linger a roaring tune

Neighbors pounding fists

against

Towering doors,

Love ending beyond your

Kitchen sink

Adulthood is hardly what

It seems.

It's a beat fast,

A minute.

Like a clap. Clap.

And I know that I'm running with it,

running and running until I'm watching the scene whip by.

I think in my mind, if I close it, I can hear the beat 'blip' and 'bollip'.

Lingering on until a wry smile sort of slivers across my lips, like a snake caught up in a tree.

"I know if I open my eyes, reality will lay bare to me..."

But who cares what it feels like to be dead,

when the world is giving me a lead on ahead in the melody of this song.

Hell! I can scream and laugh, kick my legs until I'm singing like I'm a choreographed puppet meant to clap on beat. Clap.

Here, the beat repeats in my head,

but not like those fucking songs that stick.

It's through and through, and the melody ended but repeats clearly in my head.

"I know if I open my eyes, reality will bleed away."

I can fall into the non-reality, and still feel the air whistle around my ears.

He's singing a song again,

singing of somewhere else...

But it doesn't matter what's in his head, he's in my head.

Melodies of his emotions long since drafted,

creating realities where I know I can drift in...

"I know if I can..."

Open my eyes.

"Open. Open. Open."

Hahahaha-

Melodies.

Like some sort of sick play on the pain of what it means to be alive.

I know.

"I know it can be the melody lingering on."

Like a joke about suicide, the meaning passes, and we go on after the melody long ends.

There are those who say analog records just sound better than digital CDs or streams of music. When all is dissected, no one can really tell much difference. So why this media legend?

I've come to the conclusion that it's a biological proclivity, not one of perceiving fidelity. We prefer analog as comfortingly human.

Consider this: as AI matures, the "thinking" being programmed is that of "fuzzy logic," the back-and-forth between the limits that narrow and hone in on a solution. That is as human as the back-and-forth of our tympanic membranes, as sound waves (analog vacillations) strike them.

Thus, we are evolved for analog, yet we embrace the digital as our technology evolves. CDs beat out the hertz limits of records, so there the tech went. It is absolutely fascinating that the digital machinations are gravitating to analog, e.g., fuzzy logic, while our human endeavors are gravitating toward digital perception.

This is as ironic!

Analog ("wavy") humans are seeking the digital; digital computing is seeking the analog. So it is as paradoxical as it is ironic.

Considering my basis for this conclusion—hearing, oscillating ear drums and such—we know that the movement of ear drums mimics (mirrors?) those oscillating waves striking them. These are fluid movements. But digital is not fluid. Digital involves delivery of all-or-none packets (viz., 0s and 1s). This is like the double-slit quantum experiment when a force is delivered as both waves AND particles.

And then, there’s this:

The American music industry agreed on a standard of 440 Hz in 1926 for the note, A, for tuning, and some instrument manufacturers began to rely on this. In 1936, the American Standards Association also recommended that the A above middle C be tuned to 440 Hz. However, 432 Hz was what the ancient mathematicians used for A and, accordingly, the corresponding harmonic system. Why argue that, since we all agree that the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides? And who said that? Why, Pythagoras, that’s who. (And the Wizard of Oz.) Also, interestingly, Pythagoras was the guy who said 432 Hz ruled the waves—not the slightly higher-pitched harmonics of 440 Hz, further augmenting violations of the natural order, as is dictated by the Music of the Spheres.

We are creatures of waves, even at 440 cycles per second; we navigate the universe on the tides of flow and ebb. Is it any wonder that analog embraces us better; that analog just seems friendlier? Is that why analog seems to sound better? Or is it that it just sounds more human? More comforting? Like the nurturing of a lactating mother.

But what do I know? I'm a hopeless romantic, and that's how lactating mothers got into my rant, here.)

Don't misunderstand me. I like my "devices." They're pretty and they're fun, and they make the camaraderie of writing on such vehicles as writing sites possible. However...

I check my feed. I am “fed” a picture of a lover's respite under the tree. Now THAT is analog. I am also “fed” a picture of persons consulting their digital streams. THAT is NOT analog.

As we embrace discrete packets of information, served à la carte on the smorgasbord of our “feeds” and abandon the wave of what's human, we venture off alone, according to the staccato of incoming data packets while ignoring the loss of the 8 Hz in life’s harmonics that surely must be important.