monet_on_bartlett blumengarten when he was someone, he remembered standing on a bridge between worlds. he stood there looking back from where he came, where he was known, where people wanted to be with him. they were calling to him in a language he had to learn, in words that took him months to commit to memory and yet he pretended he did not hear them. he was drenched in their intimacy, nevertheless he merely shook off their love like a dog shaking water from its fur. 030812 ... blumengarten he was in the middle. he was caught. he could not return. he could not proceed. how did this happen? and so he climbed over the railing that keeps people from hurting themselves, from being killed. he closed his eyes and allowed a final thought to define his existence. "beginning, life, death," he said to himself. and then he jumped, realizing something would become of him even as his blood spilled on the rocks below. 030813 ... blumengarten for the few moments that he fell, he imagined himself to be a bird who has never learned to fly and this was his punishment; his failure. he had been reduced to a victim of gravity. weight sinking back to the earth it had started from. when he hit he wanted to feel the pain he had brought to so many. but, he felt nothing. he did not even see how bright red the oozing was that came from the cracking of his skull. he did not see he had x's where his eyes once were. instead he woke as if he had been dreaming and discovered like one who senses the birth of renewal, that he was hope. he was hope. he possessed nothing of shape or form or breath. he was only desire. expectation. the longing to be who he really was. 030814 ... amy what a sweet sweet nothing. 030814 ... blumengarten and he found he was nowhere or anywhere. as if he dwelt in the land where wind originated. yet the inclinations that swirled around him seemed to lift and propel him like a seed in search of fertile earth. he was a soul without a body and there was no place like home. ............................................................. in the first morning, he waited, for this is all he could do, simply wait until life recognized him again because there would be no renewal until this happened. to be born was to be accepted. 030815 ... blumengarten "i wanted to be someone i could not be," he said, and if his thoughts had a voice they would sound like a baby's cry in the darkest night when lonliness is all it knows. "i once possessed great wealth, treasures of the hidden heart, but in my careless neglect it all decayed and withered. in one moment i found beauty and truth collapsed in my hands." if he had started new as hope, then he was growing. the sorrow he felt for what he had lost was the pain he must know if he was to ever receive forgiveness. and so he wept hard and long. he became tears. the same salt that stung, also cleansed him. he cried for his failure, for his neglect, for that which he took for granted. he cried until he fell like rain into the sea. 030816 ... blumengarten he was the sea and the sea was him. the constant, swirling movement of sky-reflected waters. the beauty of absolute chaos. power humiliated. the willingness to give without the expectation of return. the yielding of self-imposed boundaries. 030818 ... blumengarten his hope was to be ever changing, always creating new ways to exhibit love. his love would be constant and fresh, unpredictable and clean. he would welcome the sun, allowing it the unrestricted freedom to shine. and this light which was the origin of source, would illuminate the remaining darkness within him. he would be a canvas that the sun would stretch its fingers upon, filling in the intricate cracks of his blank soul until everything was seen. there would only be one image. 1. truth a mere vessel of emotion untinctured by experience. 030819 ... blumengarten and when he was one final wave, an impetus of desire, moving, building, growing, seeking knowledge, it was then that life itself and all the elements by which hope turns into love, broke him and he crashed... first into himself, scattering vestige until the many pieces of history dissolved into lesson, and then upon the shore, a new world just created. 030820 ... blumengarten "it is that i must be a skeleton," he thought to himself. though he did not inhabit the bones that rolled about in the crashing surf, he sensed he would, for he would have another beginning. seagulls landed near him and cautiously approached, curious of him. kelp intertwined amongst the trappings of his ribs. a clam hung where his heart should be. sea foam collected in the recesses of his skull until the stiff breeze blew it cartwheeling away. crabs, wary of exposure, took shelter in the shadow of his pelvis. and when the tide in its predictable cycle went out, he saw himself like one in need of pity, vulnerable, bony fingers digging into the wet sand, toes stretched as far as they could go. these were the final moments before something would happen. when hope evolved and possibility hung like a full moon in a sky suddenly clear of clouds. he wondered who would find him. how organ and muscle and skin, eyes, ears, and hair would complete him. he did not worry, for every beginning had its sunrise. there was never a darkness forgotten. never a night neglected. 030821 ... blumengarten and so he watched the moonlight turn his bone to the color of pearl. it was then that life came to him and did not look away. they sat together. like a mother who will be there when one wakes, the reason to open the eyes became love. anticipating the inevitable dawn, he exhaled completely, reliving the tragedy of his recent history. it would be his scar. he slept soundly, like a man whose dreams could have relevance, realizing when he woke, everything on the second morning would be different because he would no longer be alone. 030822 ... jinx beautiful 031116 ... cr0wl greta, my third born daughter, is using material from this story and cadeau_de_vous, neues_leben, vier_seizoenen, and kemulya_48 and other non online sources to create a film for her senior thesis at her school, sva, in nyc. it has both humbled and united me with her. she desires knowledge of her father's inner cartography. i give her the map with delight, realizing her sense of home and personal history is as vital as breath. as origin. as the identity of love. she is writing the screenplay. i am consulting. we are all of us together. i am bubbling up with an over abundance of joy... 080914 what's it to you? who go blather from