"Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing." - Camille Pissarro
"Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing." - Camille Pissarro
My brother's debut drops in a few weeks.
I write songs but he pours moonlit midnights and perfect harmonies and shiny swooshes and heartfelt words and every waking moment into bars of the most beautiful harmonies I could scarcely dream about.
Set.
Darling,
Why is it that we resolve to turn a new page with an essence of thoughts only the most cluttered of days can press? Why is it that we wish to begin new pursuits when we find ourselves chasing our tails?
These days are weathered, with every clock strike stricken and bound by ties, but know that I desire to know you more, know that this will soon be my every effort.
I am silly and staccato. I am shy and inarticulate and desire to redact more breaths than make me breathless, but in the silent spaces of star crossed nights I have known that my world will soon emerge an open book if I so restlessly desire it to be a page turner.
I wish to do something great and wonderful,
but I must start by doing the little things like they were great and wonderful.
It's curious because she feels she knows the Northern Lights by heart.
Just as the stranger at the back of the empty concert hall follows quiet eyes to the tempo of the last dancer on the stage before him, her pulse recites the twists and turns of a sky so bright it convinces her all the beauty her eyes have found before have been mere masqueraders, cloaking illusion upon another to surrender her as helpless prey falls to bitter air. The last curtain calls fall in timelapse succession and the scene cuts as he closes his eyes to lean back, finding himself sailing alone through the intricate walls and carved statue towers that he is convinced reverberate in whispers.
A sandstone spire leans down on the strike of twelve and she wakes from lantern lighted incantations with frost on her eyelashes and a thousand thoughts to rest. The other cities cried louder as the dark enfolded but these streets allure her in silent precision, past the hidden stage entrance, through red satin draped from marble ceilings to mosaic floors, and to the cross on center stage, as she looks out across vistas of hundreds of years of faces and heard a thousand melodies, each character a story within a story of their own. She stands before the lone piano and chooses a shy set of notes to add to their song. It is but courteous, she thinks, to say thank you for being here tonight.
"I thought I was alone."
He cleared his throat to dismiss himself as the hesitations between footsteps carried him slowly to the rim of the stage. She looked down at the stranger after a moment of quiet, thinking her closing words too shallow and every stretched carpet out of their depth.
"So did I. Maybe we should look more closely next time."
A day after drifting home from Paris I'm flying out to Chicago to shoot my first editorial commission after someone charming saw a few of these and so kindly asked. It was the best news because I got to tell everyone that both being stopped by a hundred farmers and getting sick a week before traveling the continent was worth it.
It was.
(Analog)
It's a lot easier to fall asleep after hours of staring at the ceiling if you get up, dig out the craft scissors at some unseen hour and deck your room out from the hardwood floors to the birds on the windowpanes with trinkets and tangles of ribbon and vines and things that look like glowing roses and sheet webs.
Then, it goes without saying that you can drift off soundly and fly free in some marvelous dream, safe in the knowledge that Sleeping Beauty would feel right at home if ever she wanted to stop by for tea.
I should know.
