street scene rochester

plus four

remains

butterflier

the road and border

The Boreal Forest, Part 2

I watched the nurse working, clicking machine dials, reading a printout, fiddling with instruments in the wee hours of the morning, my baby laid up with the ultimate head wound, a hot mess. Imagine a blow to the head with a pick axe where the pick axe cracks thru eye and meat and bone and lands into the fleshy brain. Now imagine that blow delivered meticulously and slowly over the course of three months. To your wife. To your lover.
Buttercup looked up at me in a morphine haze as I dabbed the blood that has drained from the incision to her lips and neck.
Water she whispers.
Water?
Yes she whispers.
I ready the water in the thin plastic cup and fiddle a straw out of its delicate paper case, put it in and hold the end to her lips. She draws, coughs a light powerless hack, opens her eye. I look back.
You're taking care of me.
Yes.
I remain looking until the eye drops and closes with the high.
I watch until sure she's asleep and read a few pages of a novel. She'll wake with pain in an hour, maybe sooner so I position myself where she can catch me with her peak. It opens followed by a short breath and rolls back up and the lid slowly shuts. I watch the machines and look for changes, heart rate, pulse, oxygen, all of it. These remain steady until I drift off.
In the morning the man adjacent coughs a hack, breathes deep and falls into arrest. Alarms sound. A medical team scurries and we listen, Buttercup in and out of consciousness, as they cut and work to stop internal bleeding. One hours goes by, two and they call it, the man is dead. We can hear the surgeon's call.
It looks as if the cancer has grown rapidly and now has burst an artery. At this point we can remove the stomach, spleen and upper portion of the small intestine but I'm not sure. Pause. Yes. Pause. Yes, I'm sorry. Pause. Later we can hear the woman weeping in the same adjacent space.
I'll never hold him again she sobs, I'll never hold him again.
Buttercup is more swollen, visibly bloated and almost unresponsive.
Babe. BABE.
uh
You have to drink water darlin.
don't
You have to. Her eye opens briefly, her brow knits.
BABE.
huh
Fear. I hold the straw to her lips and she sips, barely making it over the accordian bend.
The pain will decrease, this is the peak day of swelling, I say.
Fuck she responds.
It won't be forever. For any of us I thought. Then I leave to find lunch, the day just as beautiful as can be, as perfect weather as can be had and I enjoy it on my trip across the packed blacktop lots to the intersection and into the bar where I order the italian house red.
1/4 liter if you have it. Fuck it, make it a half.
The barkeep works.
Should I open a tab?
Not this time. Maybe tomorrow, we'll see.
I drink up and leave taking the long way around the sturdy brick complex in the perfect northern sun, slowing my pace to take in every second, holding my face to the sun.

plus three

The Boreal Forest, Part 1

It’s all fun and games until someone gets an eye poked out, I thought. I lay exhausted on the stiff hotel room mattress. How did I get here again? The past few months gliding by with such ferocious change.
I lay sleepless in thinking of some of our last conversations.
I’ll be a Cyclops, I’m afraid you’re not going to want to look at me.
Babe, this is the least of my worries, seriously.
You say that now but
But there is no but. This may sound rude or stupid to you now but I see anything that you may not like as a design we can change. There is really no limit to what we can do. I want to say a prayer.
OK.
I’d like to ask god that if there is a way that you don’t have to do this, that if there is a way then please reveal that to you now.
God stayed silent on this one. The following day every blue scrub and gown was a lump in my mind, a potential thing to bring news and to bring Buttercup through. But no news came, not for over eight hours, ten hours, twelve hours, fourteen hours. They said no news was good news but this was torture. Instead we prayed, we prayed catholic prayers. This was most moving to me because all the positive history and generosity of those prayers came rushing back, I felt comfort in every one of those words and felt I belonged into some family I barely knew and in place where I was a foreigner. There was nothing cursed about it, not in these moments and I made note of it, I fell right into it and listened for Buttercups voice.

plus two

plus one

the lake

Rose and Louise napping

Photo by Julie O'Rourke

Dear Friends

I will post again on Saturday, one for each day I've been absent, somewhere between fact and fiction, from circumstances I could never have imagined... stay tuned...

palette pile

hem haw

photo by Michael Frank

fools

What God wants for me are things I do not want. Sacrifice is built in.
I have confessions my people, I have confessions my friend.
“But you are dangerous Daniel, you have no limits.”
“I do, I don’t lie.” “And you are not my friend.”
“I see.” “Maybe you aught to learn your limits, maybe your quest for this ‘truth’ is bullshit. Maybe you’re a fraud.”
“Frauds give up, I’m past that, but this idea of lying, I’ll consider.”
“There are many ways to lie ‘Danny Rose’.” Danny Rose spoken with contempt. “There are many ways to manipulate.”
“I see. And you think my questions now are manipulation?”
“They are then.”
“I’m asking.”
Silence.
So I walked, grabbed a bunch of papers, stuffed them in my bag and walked. I walked down to the bank, signed lawyers papers, had them notarized and walked on. The reason for any of it long gone, complaints of the past all stupid and base. The mourning of it’s occupants long dead and useless. In hindsight, the worst kind of uselessness, gone without benefit, lost to weakness of spirit, lost to fools.

Frank & the boy

Plotting

I was stressed and jerked off three times by noon. I had many things to accomplish but very few of them involved the work laid out in the studio. It was Saturday and I wanted it so I started on another canvas, all the while imaging tools that would allow me to control the glue. It’s always a trip being alone with new work, such a love. I thought of Buttercup the entire time. When the boy came to see me he laid it out, “You’re thinking of Buttercup aren’t you?”
“Yes. You’re very perceptive.”
“I knew it.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Danny Rose.”
“Yes.”
“Wanna see my Indian guy?”
“Yes.” Which he quickly produced from his pocket. It was a crudely painted pewter figurine of a native American with a feather cloak so he looked like a bird from the back and a man from the front.
“It’s chief falling rock.”
“Huh?”
“Look out for chief falling rock. You’ll get it in a few years when you are reading.”
“OK. He’s cool though right?”
“Yes, he’s cool.”
“I’m going to bring all of them to mamma’s.”
“OK, if that’s where you want them.”
There was a silence and weariness about the studio.
“I’m exhausted,” I said to Z then fell down and did fifty push-ups. When I got up I did a dance.
“I’m exhausted too,” Z added ignoring my antics with a smirk.
“Margaritas?”
“OK,” he added shrugging his shoulders. All the thoughts driving my spirit largely silent.

the damned house

Work was too long today but steady. I earned something and I know I did. Then there was the burnt areas. I spoke to the boys after work and helped Z haul the heavy shit from the adjacent space. All in all the space was a success - 2 shows and a lot of work accomplished. I tagged on for the ride but gave it my all, produced. With the remnants back in my studio I tidied up and stared at the sculpture - thought of all that needed to be accomplished, thought of the industriousness wasted on distraction and stress. I thought of Buttercup, tucked up North with the never-ending headache and that damnable invasive thing, otherwise healthy cells gone wrong, otherwise well. I held out my hand after hauling the load and placed a dime on it imagining it heavy and my body light so that in space I eventually begin to orbit the dime as it gets heavier and denser. This drifting while at first like birth begins to produce nausea and before long I am sick from the travel. Weary I fall asleep.

Alive

“The scalpel will cut you my friend.”
“I know, I can see it,” but it slipped, across the mylar, over the metal straight edge, down and into the fleshy tip of my left pointer finger. I looked calmly at it until the blood beaded up and then poured through the surface. By the time it was dripping I had moved it over the plexiglass to catch the spill. When it had leaked enough I wrapped it in tissue and moved on. Moving on.
When I got home, I called my baby. My baby had been suffering.
“How do you feel?”
“Not good.”
“Not good, how?”
“I can’t seem to shake these headaches.”
Sigh. “Yea.” I couldn’t say much else. Spirituality, wisdom, faith, healing, is all a matter of action and mostly a private affair. She didn’t want to engage in dialogue about the ethos of election politics or the Giants or anything else. I didn’t either. So I listened to her talk about the day, my face hidden from her on the other end of the internet call.
“I planned my funeral today. With my mother.”
“Yes babe. That’s good. Did it help?”
“I don’t know. It was all so distant, the opportunity. Like the whole idea of it wasn’t real.”
“It’s not real in some ways. If you die in there you won’t know it, but we will. So it’s good but they are not doing this operation to kill you, they’re doing it to save you.”
Later I told this to Z who laughed, “I don’t plan anything. I am nothing if not faithful.”
“I know it. That is why I get you so well. You live.” Then I laughed thinking of our month to month. “We live with never a dull moment; we can say that, we are not boring.” Then we talked about love, romantic love, the kind that waits but can’t wait, the kind that woos. And that’s when we’re at our best, in the denizen sea, in the great open space, in the best of friendship.
But he saw the darkness in the sunken form of my eyes. He saw the rich material wearing on my skin which I wish was plated with silver and platinum in torrents. “You love your pain,” he said, “you love your suffering.”
“Yes but I don’t know why I choose it or attract it. Maybe it’s because I stand with what essentially was the others.” I wanted to be the other because what I had was too much, middle class even though we were lower middle class and at times poor. Getting a leg up, keeping it up, not ending up like them. Us and them. So now I suffer in hopes of something better or in hopes of a better expression. It’s coming I know, I have the feeling… Stay alive baby, get healthy.

the sea

Faith Is Circular

studio

nyc

Photographs

I sat on the truck pondering my options and hers.
“Don’t worry ,” the voice called like a mantra. “Don’t worry.”
I felt stupid for revealing doubt to myself and even more stupid to reveal it in the pages of the little black book because god knows I believe in reason first. Any lesson I’ve gained from art or literature or fiction or feeling has always been filtered through the best of my practicality and when that practicality fails I push forward on the feeling that settling in will doom the journey. “Move forward. Forget about that failure Daniel, it’s not a good battle. Fail it and move on.” That’s faith I think, to trust in reason and hope for a more interesting outcome, to hope for change through diligence of mind. And when mind fails, spirit will be there through practice of faith, of the faith I just described, just having presence to move on, push forward, dig.

I decided to take a walk to get away from my role and to get away from domestic things. Domestic things tend to crowd and frighten me, they end up lording over time and time is the key element. I had walked the three days prior and so decided to take a bike and have a look at the next town over. The distance between the towns would be far in Jersey terms but rolled out on long tracks of earth between farms in the western Ontario landscape. I hopped on that bike and peddled in the cool morning air stopping occasionally to admire the misty view of farmsteads or to a peak toward the lake. The air here hung long and cool, similar to some Iowa mornings except it extended here in the northern sun for hours longer. The day developed more slowly. I preferred it. So I peddled to the next community which held a Saturday farmers market, dismounted and browsed the goods. Among the goods was a collector of photographs. For sale, in this booth, were any number of vintage images from personal collections and homesteads and families over time from similar markets and estate sales. I fingered through, holding my spine erect, searching for miracles in the lake noon sun. I searched for signs in those photographs, I searched for rare birds on tin or metal or queer from the standard. I looked for anything of value and I kept looking. When suddenly in the small grove adjacent to the fruit stand parallel there came a scream. I turned to see. Right there under a young maple tree in the park hosting this market a man of about fifty died as his wife looked on. This is true. The woman held the man’s feet, rocking between vomits of air and bile, repeating the dead man’s name. “Andy. Andy. Andy. Andy.” I looked on as trained responders gathered ‘round working Andy’s chest awaiting the transport. The man was dead and the woman, although in full reaction to the scene before her, already knew it. The rest of us looked on, some claiming it cruel to watch, others compelled to make statement – “ you never know”, “it happens to everyone”, “God gives and takes away”, “poor guy”. Others felt compelled to mock those watching as gawkers, muttering insults at the brazen disrespect for privacy. I looked on feeling just the opposite. That to turn away would insult god’s plan. If there was one.

The following day I recalled this to my transport as we crossed the border in that loaded cattle truck. I told him about death and life and the story of the eye and he talked to me about the values of his family and what makes a man a trucker. His story made a lot of sense as my actions did to him. It was simple - I needed a ride, he had a ride, she needed her boy, I was her man, we needed community, we helped where we can. "You'll need us again," Matt said as he dropped me off along the thruway corridor.
"Yes."
"Call and we'll work it out. We got three to five trucks running this route every day."
"Thank you."
And I headed out, knowing there would be a ride, with no real plan, making it home by supper to an empty studio and a hope.

[bonus boy] bilateral binaural

where the old boy rows

whispering into the old soil

“So tame for you. It’s so sexist.”
“Really? Good.” I felt the response was sexist so I said it.
“Yea Yea Yea,” she responded, but the cat was already out of the bag and I was already sold and soiled and done. I had special knowledge and this knowledge wasn’t going to let me sink.
“I find it interesting that you choose sexist because you clearly expect and play to gender roles in your private life. It’s only the public realm and in the public realm that you object. This is significant for me.”
“Yea, because it’s too personal.”
“That’s my gig, that’s exactly the point.”
“I don’t know, who does it serve?”
“Myself for sure but I think it may serve a public who senses the same thing I do, that oppression is arrived at through lack of disclosure. Speak the people and insist on equality or some such shit.”
“It’s still lame for you.”
“More like, it is lame for you and your circles. Maybe you’re not my audience.”
“Eh.”
And then we were done and on to other topics, Sex and marriage.
“So did you fuck on this vacation?”
“No.” spoken in jovial tone.
“Really, and this is what you choose?”
“Not exactly choose but this is what it is.”
“This. This is what it is.”
“Half of the moms I know don’t have sex or very rarely have sex.”
“Jesus.” I felt dumb and blind. Why would I care? But I knew why.
“I want children but I can’t imagine the compromise. I couldn’t fail them like I failed myself. I couldn’t take the risks.”
“Don’t do that to yourself. Dear God, don’t do that to them.”
I heard her. I believed.
“Whispering into the old soil,” I breathed.
“What?”
“Nothing. I hear you. I see.” And I saw. I saw it all laid out. I saw my knuckles laid bare. “Thanks. I’ll go. I’ll be back in the morning.”