Where is Away?

I told you about old gray cardinal? Well, she done lost her mind. And old red is nowhere to be found. I know he ain’t running around no cathouse. That would be ludicrous for a bird, but wherever he is, he needs to come get his girl. This isn’t the first time she up and gone all Dorian Grey on the attic window. She must have a bird brain.

Of what is she thinking? Of what might I learn from this. I heard her under the cloud cover and maybe there’s something with a frequency normally offered by the sun. She just bang bang banging into that window, so attracted by herself she doesn’t know what to do. Probably not too often that she sees a grat, what with hanging around old red everyday.

I first heard her while I stood underneath the unfinished pergola with a table saw and mahogany that Brian Banks gave me. I ripped this into pieces and cut cans to make a Be Here Now sign. I don’t know why I’m making these. I’ll keep them around until they rot or put them inside or sell them. Maybe the museum will come when my body feeds the plants and take what was the beginning.

The old bike rims come from down the street by Andy and the strips of can that I did not use will go toward other signs, toward faces, toward unfinished paintings that might sit and know the weather. It is in the eye of time passing that I might see what is to be next, how I might take this particular be here now and add white behind the letters, how I might take the strips from the top of the old cans and fashion these into eyebrows.

And the strips of wood I do not use can become small boxes to go inside around house plants. 

There is no away. This is the greatest lesson I have to offer. So if I might take what could otherwise go away and create something pleasing to the eye, well then, maybe I have paid my dues. But it’s still more shit, still uncollected something that now has a reverence. 

Tell this to Bayon. Go to Cambodia. See Angkor Wat. Witness how banyan trees have up and grown through thousand ton pieces of stone and bowled them over like Lebowski on a Sunday. 

Dude. Let me tell you. We are not needed. We need the earth. We need her breathing. We need her worshipped. We need to bend down each day and give thanks for the time we get.