the_finest_lines_chapter_1 Jacobs dream I’d always hated the winter because it’s a season where the sky swallows the sun too early, bringing night before anyone’s really ready for it. I was making copies at an office supply store. It was seven thirty and the sky was a black void, screaming with silence – the stark silence that announces its power in late December, arriving on the bitter wind and stinging your nose and ears. I missed her most in the winter because she was my flame and, of course, the colder it gets, the more you miss the heat. There were three copy machines with three identical supply stations. There was a rack of colored paper, all of it’s brightness seemed distorted and blurred under the industrial lights of the store, like something so alive couldn’t really belong there. I was at the first machine, making copies for work, numbed by the dull hum of the copiers and the buzz of fluorescent lights. It was two years ago almost exactly. January 1st. The new year. I still hadn’t woken up from the dream state of not being able to let go. It made everything seem like concrete, like a dirty sidewalk where no one wanted to do anything except drop cigarettes and walk quickly to and from the jobs they detested, back to somewhere they could call theirs. I didn’t even know what that felt like anymore. Nothing stood out from anything else, life moved, frame by frame, with every scene ending up the same. And I had become what I always feared most – just like everyone else. 060312 ... angels climbing i heard whistling. it was a tune i instantly recognized, a song that isabelle sang when she was doing dishes or laundry. i remember she even sang when she swept the kitchen floor. i looked up and saw a girl. she wore red cordoroy shoes and bell bottom jeans. her hair was the color of honey. she was busy making copies, black words on white paper. that's what i had become. she whistled, oblivious to where she was, to me standing near her. i thought what confidence she posesses. to be so happy that it leaks forth as a song. no words, just a sprightly tune reflecting the joy of replicating thoughts on paper. i couldn't help it, so i left my work and approached her. "what are you making copies of?" i asked. i watched her standing there, still whistling. she was somewhat tall. a model nobody discovered. "my poetry," she said, looking me in the eye, smiling, as if her freedom included a conversation with an old man mourning the death of his wife, even after two years. "really?" i said, posing it as a question, seeing it as a bright light in winter's opposing darkness. i decided to be bold as light. "can i read some?" "sure," she said. she gave me a single copy. i felt privileged. ageless. accepted. life can come to a stop and then suddenly a moment can call forth into the depths of darkness, extend a hand and draw one forth from the tomb. i took her young hand. she pulled me out of a hole. i stood there and what i read was beautiful. she had wrote it from an internet cafe somewhere in greece. "that's amazing," i said. that's all i could come up with because i had lost the ability to communicate with others since isabelle's death. i simply gave up. yet, this moment when music broke my shell, a simple whistled tune, i began to live again. 060312 ... jacobs dream I'm a whistler. I whistle because it reminds me of my mother. because when you're whistling -life can't really be that bad. He spoke to me in at the copy machines as if fate wouldn't have stood for anything else. like at that very moment - some force of the world carried his being to mine and made one question change both of our lives. "can i read some?" he asked. I handed him a poem withing looking which one it was and with total faith that he would read with some universal understanding. "that's amazing." it was all he said. I smiled. "I'm Nevaeh. Sometimes i think that i don't even feel plugged in, or charged or warm, unless i'm writing. Even if it's not on paper, just writing in my mind, as if life unfolds, step by step into my own story." His eyes were old - but somewhere beneath was the smallest spark - something begging for oxygen, something screaming to flourish again. I could see this. I smiled at him and said, "Spring will be here soon." 060315 ... angels climbing i handed the poem back to her and she told me i could keep it, which i was hoping she would say. "are you sure?" i asked. "of course," she said. "i want you to have it." i remember isabelle used to write poems and put them in my lunch box along with a pastrami and rye wrapped in waxed paper. i always saved it to eat with my granny smith apple so her words would be near to me when i went back to work at the elementary school. i used to be principal, but when isabelle died, i had to retire. i lost all desire. yet, i saved everyone of her poems. i glued them one by one into blank leather books. now my only comfort is reading her words. "you just don't know what this means to me," i said. 060317 ... jacobs dream "do you drink coffee?" "it is my favorite indulgence." he replied. "There is this tiny place on the corner of 5th and Seymour I go to every morning before work. It's called 'Tangent.'" As i spoke, i was amazed at myself for saying something like this to a complete stranger. but somehow, he wasn't. "Maybe I'll see you there and we could both find some comfort in conversation. I am in dire need of real words - especially with the driving of winter's persistance..." He smiled, folded the poem i had given him and stood for a moment with his eyes glued to something so far away. A memory, maybe, or a dream - or something so beyond tangible and tried, that it could only make sense to its owner. 060322 ... re(d)visited . 091122 what's it to you? who go blather from