Coming soon to an Internet near you

If it seems like it’s been a little quiet on the front porch lately, it’s because it has. I confess, I haven’t been putting as much effort into keeping up the place. As much as I enjoy coming here and sharing all my embarrassing personal stories with the internet, it can consume a lot of energy. Lately, I’ve made the decision to focus that energy on getting a couple of large projects done. One was related to my day job as oppressor of the proletariat, one involves writing. So it is with much excitement, and anxiety that I share the news that the first draft of my book of Victorian Smut is nearly complete. She stands at 230 pages, with a few more loose ends left to complete. Then it will be off to an editor, who will hopefully polish it to a bright shine and be ready for self publishing in the fall. After that, there will be no hiding behind pseudo-anonymity. If it stinks, my name will be printed on the cover in big letters for all the world to point and laugh. So be it.

In the mean time, I’ll be popping in and out around here to try to keep things fresh, even though it’s time for the annual summer readership decline, when people finally pull themselves away from their computers to enjoy the sunshine for a few brief months. I’ll also be working on a marketing plan, digging through the details of self publishing, and establishing a vanity press, and trying to make time to get out into the sunshine myself from time to time.

The Bone Machine

A reposting of a piece I wrote for All Souls Day 2010.

Bethlehem, PA - Photo by Walker Evans - Nov 1935 from the Library of Congress FSA collection

The low scudding clouds that lingered all week, have been peeled away revealing a heartbreakingly blue sky. The kind of sky you just want to pop into your mouth and suck on, until all the sunlight slanting through the atmosphere warms the dark corners your soul, and spills out your mouth like a sigh.

My whole life I have felt like an archaeologist sifting through the ruins of a lost time, picking among the bones of the dead. I was born nostalgic for times and places that I never saw, but knew, as if I’d lived lifetimes of solitude among the ruins watching each stone crumble.

Melancholy pulses like blood within me.

Each face I have seen, each person I have known, is inside me. Photographed, classified and filed away in the long file cabinets of my memory. I know they remain there, breathing between manila folds.

I want to hold all of life within me. I want to be a vessel that can never be filled, and when poured, can never be emptied.

I stand here among the graves, eyes closed, as the wind brushes the hair from my forehead,

breathing.

The bones of the dead move beneath us, clicking like the gears of a vast machine,

slowly measuring the movement of time.