May 15

I feel I could eat the whole world raw.

Madeline Miller, Song of Achilles

Mornings are cavernous. Wasn’t it Twain who said we are “nothing but echoes”? Today there is no stage, there is no backstage. Sometimes I think god is the sound of buildings shuddering awake, shaking off the spell of dawn under the click of heels and slosh of coffee in stairwells.

These hands of mine, they are nothing like my mother’s, nothing like my father’s, conjured out of sticky tea and wire wrapped sheep gut. In moments like these, we are brazen, pulling strings like teeth, tripping over arpeggios up and down the empty halls, shamelessly loud despite the rickety sound of hands waking long after the body has risen.

look: Edward Hopper, Night on the El Train
listen: Bang On A Can All-Stars, Gene Takes a Drink
read: Thom Gunn, Human Condition