Capote reading

Well, blogging I guess.

The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome arean that other Kansans call "Out There." Some seventy miles east of the Colorado border, the countryside, with it's hard blue skies and desert-clear air, has an atmosphere that is rather more Far West than middle west. The local accent is barbed with a prairie twang, a ranch-hand nasalness, and the men, many of them, wear narrow frontier trousers, stetsons, and high-heeled boots with pointed toes. The land is flat, and the views are awesomely extensive; horses, herds of cattle, a white cluster of grain elevators rising as gracefully as Greek temples are visible long before a traveler reaches them.

What intrigues me about Capote is his language. His words are dark when needed, and heavy as brick. Yet he can inspire me to feel the whisper of the golden wheat and solemn still of the cemetary.

He was a master, and I've tried to mold myself to his style bit by bit.


We'll see if it works.

I remember the sunlight, heavy, thick with the dust of bygone days, floating and moving slowly away from my field of vision. The room is lit only from the single shaft of brilliance, like a knights lace at tournament, jousting away the dark. Back in the room I look out to see the massive jacaranda trees down the street framed in the gold that fills the room and fills the valley. The back wall of the valley is coated in a living wallpaper of orange glory. Ancient in it's spreading branches and beautiful, shading all who seek refuge, and raining the neon-purple gems that wilt and fade too soon.
It is nearly evening. Soon others will come, will come to force the routine to pick itself up form the floor where I left it, broken and tainted by this moment of release.
But until then I will stay free of it's grasp while I bathe in the gold that is already fading.
As I wait for this joy to dim so that regular life can keep going.

What would I do if it didn't stop? Grow bored? Be happy forever? No, I would soon begin to long for the bone-chilling cold that I once knew, the rushing dark that envelops all sooner or later.

This golden caress, the kiss of the sun, that are valuable because they are scarce.

To bathe in them too long is to relinquish control and abandon oneself to the moment completely. To do such is to live forever.

Alas, it has already faded. The Gold is gone and soon come the night. The rushing and pushing wind that I have come to love.

Lets talk war

Think about war. What do you see?
Do you see the trenches of WW1, or the beaches of Normandy, or the Long standoff with Russia?

Or do you see something more sinister?
Do you see the biltz of media coverage that we have come to understand as "war?"
Or the explotiation of the suffering of those who have sacrificed so much already to make the most money possible? Or the pointless and trivial victories hyped by those who "control" the ground and have a picture they'd like to show you?

I have come to understand war to be the profiteering of those who have over those who have the nationalistic pride and raw intestinal fortitude to serve.

Take those who have no choice but to have their laundry washed by a halliburton subsidiary. But first, a backstory.
Halliburton is a new wave of company, and this new wave crests as our Notions of "America The Great" come crashing around our ankles. This wave puts the profit from the job even above the quality that must minimally be met.

KCO is a Halliburton subsidiary. They wash clothes and feed the troops. Well, in theory.
KCO charges $150 for every load of laundry, and then does something unthinkable.

They just don't wash the clothes.

They take the money, and, essentially, give the clothes back the next day, just as sweat and muck filled as yesterday. This is not healthy over long periods of time. One immediate response may be "Just wash them elsewhere," right? Well, the chain of command has decreed that the average grunt MAY NOT WASH THEIR OWN CLOTHES. They must report to KCO and deliver the garments to be returned the next day.
Worse though is the food production. Halliburton charges the united states government around $100 for every "Home Cooked" meal they serve. However, these meals, for the most part, never arrive. The food that does arrive is moldy and uneatable. Worse than refusing to do laundry, they starve the troops while charging the US government all the while. Worse than not serving the troops is preparing the food at regular intervals while refusing to keep a 24 hour schedule. this allows terrorists to pinpoint the time that our troops eat and attack when there is no other option but to eat.

However, worse than all the rest is "Water Sanitation." Halliburton has the task of cleaning the water that the troops will bathe in, drink, and live on. There is no sanitizing methods. The solution that halliburton uses is to dump a chemical cocktail into the mix, and then return it to the troops because That's Cheaper. The water is not clean, it is turned into poison.

The message is the war has changed. Everyday I consider the possibility that this has been staged for the profit of industries like Halliburton. There is money to be made in this war, your money going to Halliburton on the order of billions every year.

Think now about what war is to you.

Jetsam

This place is comfortable.
Of course, this is The Cove. This is the area that we have come to, in many ways, love. They kicked us out of our last cove.

We were raucous.

They were tech dudes.

Like fire and gas.

Our new home sits alongside the the back of Cournell Lecture hall, and since we are still very very loud, I assume that we'll be out of there by the beginning of this upcoming school year. Not that this is a problem as we are a dying place, a dying hangout. The influx of new crew to our galley has been poor the past years, we have only 4 underclassmen (2 sophmores 2 Juniors) to show for so much time(I don't count freshmen. They havn't had time to soak in the heady brew that is our magic. Well, that's one word for it.) I don't believe in the possiblity of them as successors. Morning noon or night it's the same drivel on pointless games and meaningless squabbles. But they're freshmen, what more could I expect of Guppies?
We lounge as we did before and will again. Against the wall, any of the three pillars which serve as backrests and territory marks, even on the ground. We have claimed this place and we learn more of it every day. The sophmore we call 'Keeenah' enjoys the grassy mound near the right exit of the cove, the gamers prefer around the corner(where the power outlets are) and the rest of us fit in between. We are comfortable with each other, yes, but the comfort comes from serperation. Every contact with others is filtered in some way through computers or games. Isolation is the order of the day. The concrete wall provides a buffer against the wind and a easy table or stool for any who need it. We recently found a picnic bench and claimed it. I feel it was a good acquistion as it was in the Montegue field, abandoned. Like a ship, scuttled and left to the mercy of her mother, the sea.
Sadly, we don't hold much in common with each other anymore. Every day there is a new crack in the foundation of our alliance, a new diversion, new computer, new game that we cling to, our rafts in the fray. I fear that we are tearing each other apart but it should be so. Soon we shall leave and our home shall return to the nothing that it was. It will once again be nothing but space covered in concrete; devoid of the love that we gave it and the shelter it gave us.

But for now, this place is still comfortable. It is our home port, our bay, our Cove. There can be no other.

Sadly we are but few, we rise as islands in the glistening archipelago that is our world, our life.

Soon there will be none of us.

We will be washed away as so much jetsam on the tide.

Finding my way Home

The stars are out when it's Time. I now know when to go, as the wind twists through me and me. I need to find home.
"It's time to drink the stars and say goodnight."
With my eyes above I must make the way home, through the field of moonlight waves and across the whispering dreams that will lead me astray if I let them. I have been here before, this is not unfamiliar, yet I am still lost in the tall grass of life. It is dark, the moon is out, the trees call for me to join them.

I cannot. I must go home. Home. Home to the warm orange glow that I have come to understand. My companions are waiting like pirates before a swarm. Waiting. Waiting and watching the world around them. Comfortable in place and yet stuck.
"how could they be stuck? They are happy."

Simply. They are conent.
I have been here before too. That straight path ahead leads to a glorious dawn, but it is not mine to take. The darker and twisted is for me.

I will not find home tonight.

The snow keeps falling

Snow has a distinct way of falling when sorrow is in the air. The air always seems heavier, fuller and even more of an obstacle than before. I remember one such time, watching a tragedy befall an innocent man who just wanted to go home. He looked married, full of life and looking forward to the dinner which he held in the brown bags cradled in his arms. He was not a young man by any stretch. Indeed, the wear of years shown on the grey in his beard and the full bulge of his jacket around his belly. He walked with a brisk pace, headed to what appeared to be home. Head bowed and shoulders up he met his fate.

The sirens were loud in the quiet that followed.

And after that, the snow kept falling. Slowly, purpousfully covering the spot of tragedy. Wiping clean the slate that is life and filling in the gaps of memory, burying what once was with white nothing.

This is life.

I look towards the sky and there is nothing but the disappearance of what is and the replacement of what should be.

The snow keeps falling.
The snow keeps falling and the cold will soon consume me.

This is life.
This is the gift that disappears too quickly.

"This is for Sale"

A man clad in black stands in the snow, back turned to the listener.
"This is for Sale" the somber tone tolls.

It's a child's crib, out of place in the black on blacked out windows. The pink of the bars that wrap around to keep the potential inhabitant safe seem out of place. There is nothing to protect anymore, and it seems that the crib, knowing this, has let itself fall to pieces. There is nothing that could fix this crib,

Could it be that the child is just grown? Perhaps the family received another as a gift and just needs one to go? It's possible, but I think the voice tolls somber because what should not happen has happened. Why? Why would this happen? Could it be possible that such horror would befall one so innocent? Apparently so. Indeed, the world is full of the tragedies that befall children, the horror that seeps inward to consume their innocence.

Upon the wall

Beyond the college lane and open winding access road lies Kennedy Theatre. And upon the expanse that I have come to know as a wall there are various trophies that bare grim witness to the horrors of humanity. Bleached and polished skulls of beautiful beasts rear from the wall in dessicated horror at the indignity of their new existence, crying for the abuse administered to obtain them. Five such horrors exist. 2 caribou, one deer, and two unidentified sets (we spend wasted hours trying to guess what they are, so far nothing of use has come of it) that I believe are of African origin. The greater of the two extends nearly four feet into the open air, with 3.26 in base at each horn that gently spirals into a sharp gleaming tip. The other set, by far my favorite, is shorter and thicker, with an extension that winds around the horn as the staircase winds around a fake castle.
In each case, the horns are attached to a piece of the original skull, and mounted upon the wall. Where they came from, who gave them and what they mean to the owner, I may never know. Yet, I spend my time gazing at them and enjoying the thought of making something so that I could wear them.