“Autumn leaves were falling down like pieces into place…” – TS

And I can picture it, yes, even after all these days. And I know it’s long gone; and I know there’s nothing I can do, but I forget about You long enough to forget why I needed. To.

That’s Taylor, not me. Credit to the ghosts.

In the expanse of woods behind our ten acre plot, I step outside the back door of my studio to hear ten thousand leaves — a million — falling to the forest floor as one. Today’s wind takes them all. Tomorrow’s wind will take a million more.

“A hundred million birds — fly away.”

That’s Michael, not me. Credit to the ghosts. Fables of the Reconstruction // Reconstruction of the Fables.

“And inside every turning leaf, was the pattern of an older tree. Things I’d never seen; things I’d never see.”

That’s Gordon, not me. Credit to the ghosts. Ghosts in the machine.
(And if you get that reference, you are my kind of cool. I love you.)

[Firing up the fidget spinner, on the pale wood top of my drafting table, for momentum. Get it? Drafting table? A place where one goes to make drafts? {Oh boy. It’s gonna be a long ass day if he’s starting it like this. – Ed.} It wasn’t until yesterday that I realized I don’t have to hold it; it’ll just spin like a motherfucker on the tabletop right here, between my Delete key hand and my first five am mug of coffee. Likely the first of many too many. As close to a perpetual motion machine as I’ll ever get. Only way out is through.]

That’s all me. Don’t blame anyone else.

I’ll try not to call you up again — everytime I don’t, I almost do — but I can’t promise not to break you like a promise. I’m unreliable these days :: these days :: these days :: i i i am not a bot :: these days.

Soon enough, we’ll take our frigid winter walks there, soaking in what little daylight there is in an Indian winter, traipsing near where they made mounds that are now planted with corn; then holy sites or more. A legacy of blood. What else can we do? What else, beyond seek a reprieve in daylight? And think about how to explain all that to a nine year old.

I don’t know what that means, or how I can be… already dreading and anxiously awaiting it, all at once. At least once it snows, it means I’m done firing for the year. Call it what you want to.

“…The air was cold, but something about it felt like home, somehow…”

Taylor again. Pretty much if it’s in quotes and it sounds good, it’s her. Call it what you want to. You make me so happy it turns back to sad; there’s nothing I hate more than what I can’t have.

Stupid kiln.

More dead Dream thoughts. Tons of them. Before that tragic news yesterday, I had a whole three pages (or whatever) cued up about burying it alive but mistakenly thinking it was over; now it seems like an awfully petty metaphor. But “this love left a permanent mark”; I can’t help but run my fingers over the scar.

And I [shouldn’t] forget about you [dream; else] long enough to forget why I needed [really, still do need] to.

Yes, Taylor. That original line: can you hear it and think of anything better in that spot? There’s no way. It is perfect. But the brackets in my mongrelized version there; if you hadn’t flashed on it yet, I’ll spell it out, since it’s still a couple hours from daylight and I need a friend:

[Stuff in straight brackets is what would have been endnotes, back on tw@se. An affectation born of a technical limitation, like most decent creative ideas are. The OA loves limits. These are my thoughts to myself, the meta layer as I’m writing; thoughts which any decent writer (or person) would leave out; would cut without a second thought on the first editing pass. (Yes, you may be astonished to know, but there actually are multiple editing passes on most of these. Sometimes with additions and corrections days later, just to really mess with Witt’s head. Not nice, but he should know better, by now, than to believe in the permanence of text. It’s not canon until all the guilty parties are dead.) Stuff in straight brackets is for me for you, if that makes sense. It’s a stubborn rejection of the Gygaxian Premise (which, you won’t recall, is that any part of a writing that you like the most is probably the part you should cut. I keep them all. You’re welcome.]

(Stuff in parens is just normal usage: an aside, something tangential, but often as a qualifier or way to undermine what I’m in the midst of saying. They’re fun, and they help keep me honest. Probably also infuriatingly loopy and hard to track. All the blog you can read, or your money back.)

{Stuff in curly brackets is a new goof of an idea; I’ve introduced the character of an imaginary Editor, who steps in, like in the grand old days when journalism was about facts and accountability, not debating whether people could and should have their own “facts”, sans accountability. Who knew the World Wide Web was going to be the downfall of our civilization? Not me, or the hippies and scientists that built the damn thing. They genuinely thought it might bring about a new Golden Age; a utopia of knowledge and communication. Idiots. We are monkeys with machine guns.}

{OK, as you probably noticed, because you’re smart and a careful reader, Scott just broke the format in that previous paragraph while trying to explain the format. Jeepers. It’s like he can’t help himself. And this, I’ll note, is on only one cup of coffee. So this — this paragraph right here — is an example of what he was talking about. If it’s in curlies, it’s by me, The Editor, which means you can trust it and take it as T H E . F I N A L . W O R D . Word to your mother; -Ed.}

Well. That went off the rails in surprising order, now didn’t it? Guess we got some shop talk in, but hell. I was aiming for abstract poetry and bullseyed redundant word salad.

And damn it, I told myself that I wasn’t going to rush in here and cover over that eulogy so quickly today. The one time I manage to hold it together and write something linear, concise and with only a justifiable amount of profanity; it should get to linger at the top of the page longer than a (very short) overnight. But what can I do? Sleepers gonna sleep; bloggers gonna blog.

I told myself that I should hover and write in the background today, if I couldn’t help it — nothing wrong with honing some stuff in Drafts, so that it’s eventually maybe a little better than this. I like the ones that linger and morph and grow strange new fruit when I hold onto them for a few days or weeks. Ah well.

I’m thinking that innocent civilians might be stopping by, linked in from polite society {I think he means Facebook. LOL. – Ed.}, to see that one thing I wrote that wasn’t a steaming trainwreck; nice old ladies. Which is fine, but then if they scroll up or down a little, holy god get me out of here. “I wonder what broke his brain so bad?, they’ll ask their daughters (my former high school friends) on next weekend’s obligatory phone call. Like I said, the Web is basically a harbinger of our endgame. As we (the sane, rational half of us, anyways) have so recently discovered — and to our collective peril — everything is basically one click away from everything else, now. Beauty from madness, joy from sadness. It is the way of the world. I can’t be blamed too much for that.

I’m unreliable these days.

[Bonus points for working in “peril”. That one’s for you, Adam. And I bet Dart would have liked it.]

“So it goes.”

That’s KV. Maybe the best line ever written in English.

“Maybe we got lost in translation, maybe I asked for too much, and maybe this thing was a masterpiece, ’til you tore it all up. It was rare, I was there, I remember it all too well.”