lightbulb_light_and_rock tender_square i was in a second-hand store, either working or browsing, and picked up a vintage victorian hurricane parlor lamp, the kind with double-decker curves in the shape of a woman, the kind that burns oil into the night. i don’t know if the lamp was so delicate that it broke with my touch, or if i had dropped it. suddenly, robin’s egg glass was everywhere, and i was picking up the largest concave curves and nesting them in my hand, placing the smaller baby shards within. i was barefoot on concrete flooring and felt a stabbing pain in my right foot. i lifted it and looked over my shoulder, saw the glint of glass piercing my sole. i pulled it out and the blood poured, but i did nothing to sterilize or stop it. i kept walking. again, the process repeated itself. i couldn’t tell if i was dropping the glass i held in my hands and then stepping on it, or if it was simply the hazards of being shoeless, but the bottom of my foot was cut two more times. it became a design of three wounds, in the shape of a triangle, past, present and future, intersecting the nerves associated with shoulder tension, with carrying the weight of the world on one’s back. in the store there was a dresser filled with vintage grunge shirts—alice in chains, pearl jam—but i wanted the nirvana one screen-printed with white on black. the image wasn’t theirs though, it was the misfits skull face, a design the band made in tribute to a 1930’s film called “the crimson ghost.” i put the shirt on immediately and admired the fit. someone noticed my injured foot, the open and reddened exit wounds, but i brushed off their concerns. whatever poured from me required release. the yang energy of the past, of my memories, of my joys and pains, were flowing out toward the future. 220417 what's it to you? who go blather from