So enjoy it. I pledge to have more of these posted at more regular intervals, but I’m still adjusting to my new job, which has cut in to my creative time.

Enjoy.

The small pup gnawed a hole in the sock

It was a clear, balmy summer day. A dense, foggy wind blew around him, gluing him to the wicker chair on his front porch.

He’d been ten years in the same job, in a stuffy cube, his only joy when he came home for lunch, since the office was just a few miles from his house.

When his coworkers headed out to the same old delis or chain burger shops, he drove home, warmed leftovers in the microwave and ate in peace. During the summer, he loved it best when he brought his food outside and ate it on his front porch, sitting in his wicker chair, watching Northern Flickers horde seeds from the bird-feeder, behind a curtain of humidity, nibbling away.

It was only a month ago that he’d gotten a puppy for his kids, a doughy pug named Beets who he’d walk around his yard while his food overcooked in the microwave. He’d bring Beets out on the porch with him, fasten the leash to a leg of his wicker chair and scratch the dog between its eyes, in between bites.

Each day he pampered the dog longer, his lunch lasting an hour, or an hour and ten minutes. All we wanted to do was bring the dog back to work with him, to tie its leash around his swivel chair. If only Beets could curl up on his lap as he sat in that cubicle, taking calls and typing messages.

Yet today he left Beets inside to whimper behind the front door as he sat in the humid heat, sipping the last of the iced tea he had made that morning

It’s downsizing, not a reflection of his work, the boss had said before sending him to wipe clean his cube.

Though someone had wiped clean his computer already, and he wondered what had happened to the picture of his kids that used to fill the screen.

During the drive home he felt his toe sticking through a fresh hole in his sock.

Though he hardly remembered that drive down the snaky road that coiled around the lake he’d so often passed and stared at. He remembered the hole.

And when he took off his shoes on his porch the white-washed wood felt hot and wet under that toe, except in the spot where Beets had chewed away the paint.

© 2010, Henry E. Powderly II. All rights reserved.

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I love it.

© 2010, Henry E. Powderly II. All rights reserved.

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On my first trip to Long Island, I remember how the border-less villages blended together, me leaning into her and asking, “And what’s this village called now? When did we leave the other one?”

But eventually the strip malls disappeared and we pulled in to Port Jefferson, the quaint, maritime village she grew up in that was full of small shops, varied eateries and a classy hotel. And there were the boats too: small ones, some large, yachts, a ferry and a tugboat moored in front of the power plant.

And then I moved to Long Island, and I still smile when I escape from the strip malls and land in Port Jefferson, where the boats sail into the Long Island Sound.

I visited there the other day to work overlooking the port, snapping a few photos in between phone conferences.

Enjoy.

© 2010, Henry E. Powderly II. All rights reserved.

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Maybe the people in the photo were just looking for Connecticut, but I see them looking for answers, or perhaps seeing the futility of asking in the first place.

Here’s another photo I took that day. Nice spot, right? And on Long Island, too.

© 2010, Henry E. Powderly II. All rights reserved.

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1. The Sound and the lighthouse

It’s natural Zen, something made that usually isn’t. Though it couldn’t be anything but what it is, the rose tree, two stories high, blooming with color and fragrance and peace.

There’s good, simple good in the world, simple beauties evolving over years, like a young rose vine that decades ago inched up a tree trunk and inched and bloomed and inched and bloomed for years, so many years before I moved to Long Island and got in the habit of looking forward to spring so I could empty my head under the rose tree. …

This year I’ve snapped more photos with a new camera. But click here to see the photos from last year.

© 2010, Henry E. Powderly II. All rights reserved.

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But I think they’re starting to know me. They don’t scamper like they used to when I walk by. In fact, one today let me kneel about seven feet from it to snap a few photos.

So, here’s the bunny. Let’s call him Noah, taking a break from repopulating the world.

© 2010, Henry E. Powderly II. All rights reserved.

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Chapter 1 – ‘Round Midnight

“He’s a clown.”

But Irwin’s words couldn’t cut the clamor, the hundred mashed-up voices, the heat the smoke the bass and the funk, the song and the singer, the cigarettes the booze the blur and the blues. The bar killed the words, dead in his mouth.

“What?” said Will.

The beat shook spirals in Irwin’s scotch … his sixth.

“A clown, man. A sad clown,” Irwin howled.

Will shook his head.

They sat at the corner table, the one closest to the stage at the bar, University West on 116th Street in Manhattan. It was a bi-leveled college bar mostly packed with students from the Ivy League school that stood across the street. The street level of the bar was the brown level, a spectacle of wood and brass. The booths, wood. The bar, a wood and brass island, where everyone packed tight against it to wave their arms, hold up twenties and say “me, I’m next” to the pretty bar maidens.

In this first year of the new millennium the bar was not much more than a meat market where young students met to nurse a healthy buzz before pairing off and fucking the night away in city dorms or homely Harlem apartments. But long ago, before bar music was a meatloaf of one-hit wonders, the famous Beat poets sat in those same wood booths and wrote of life and sex and scrawled in unlined notebooks while jazz bopped off the walls, all with at least healthy buzz, of course.

The underground level of the bar, however, was the black level. The walls, the tables, the chairs, the stage … black. Down there the music played, the bands raged. The young danced and spilled beer on the floor. And there, in the black room, surrounded by chaos, Irwin Jones sat with his friend Will, at the table closest to the stage.

“I’m telling you Will, it was weird. This guy, this clown. He wore this … trench coat, all ripped up, pockets full. One of those round hats, you know, like the ones the old-time cats used to wear. Oh, big shoes too, but not those funky-colored clown shoes, you know man. They were ordinary, brown wingtips, just at least six sizes too big, or something. I don’t know. But, man, his face –”

“What?” said Will.

The boom, the bass and the singer, a red-faced, freckled woman dressed in a tight, yellow plastic jumper and a big purple afro, made Irwin sway. The music was strong, the groove tight, and Irwin should have shut up, poured out that unnecessary sixth scotch and enjoyed the old Marvin Gaye song the young musicians played with a new, more urgent sense of soul. But Irwin only thought of the clown, of the noise … and of steadying his twirling head.

The scotch was Irwin’s sixth drink at University West but not his sixth drink of the night. Hours before, he and Will started out with a seven-dollar bottle of vodka, and took turns shooting the Russian gasoline while listening to Coltrane’s Sun Ship in Irwin’s dorm room. Irwin cranked the music so loud that the guy across the hall, a student at the Ivy League school who had traveled to New York from Denmark, threatened to break the damn stereo if Irwin didn’t leave. So they did, off to University West to listen to funk and keep the buzz alive.

“His face! It was painted. All white, black around the eyes. The little triangles on his cheeks. But man, it was the frown he painted. The brightest damn red you’ve ever seen, and liquid looking too. He kept the lips white. It was crazy. This sad-faced clown. Oh, and he had on black gloves that had the fingers cut off, you know. You could see his tips.”

“ … Yeah, man,” said Will.

There are not many people who, after drinking as much as Irwin did that night, would still have the necessary motor function in their lips to construct a sentence. But typical slurred speech and heavy lethargy didn’t afflict Irwin when he was drunk. Instead, the more Irwin drank the more wired he became. His eyes blew open, pupils dilated and swirled back and forth and up, down, in a circle, like he was dreaming. His hands twitched. His fingers bent and opened, bent and opened, like he was playing his horn or pointing everywhere. He leaned back and forth like a metronome. Another friend of his, Sally, once gave him the nickname “google-eyed Irwin,” to describe his uber-boozed persona. It captured well the crazy, wobbly, electric Hyde Irwin became.

Irwin’s google-eyes spied a lithe brunette as she danced in the opposite corner. But sad clown was the only character he could focus on.

“Yeah man, it’s so he can play his horn.”

“What?” said Will.

“He wasn’t just hanging out in the park, making balloon animals or riding a tricycle. He was there to play. He had this brown leather gig bag, and – a Mark VI. The clown had a Mark VI, the best sax you can get and the clown’s got it on his shoulder. So I grabbed a seat under a tree … so I could listen. Wait, listen, you gotta hear this.”

“Yeah man,” said Will, as he stared at the curvy brunette and kept the band’s beat with his head.

“Dude, it was incredible, check it out. He starts playing this minor blues-type thing, ripping these killer lines, and he keeps landing on the low B-flat, like BOOM then killer blues licks, then BOOM and back to these blues lines … but after each BOOM he’d add a few more color tones to the lick, changing the feel from minor to half-diminished and then it shifted to this augmented riff and then to some other colorful line until the whole key that he started in seemed … gone. But still, it was the BOOM B-flat, still there, still the power of the thing, but its relationship to the harmony of the piece had changed. It was like everything around that tone fought it and … embraced it at the same time. And he didn’t stop. That B-flat just BOOM and the colors just swirling. And somehow, he just falls back into B-flat major … and then he blew this serenity, this winding down riff that just painted this peace on you. And man. It was huge, it opened my eyes. It’s what I want, what I want to find. I never felt so close to a song before and–”

“Dude, I’m sorry,” said Will. He leaned into Irwin’s ear. “I see you’re excited about something but I can’t hear you. It’s just too loud in here.

Irwin shot his scotch.

Then his eyes grew extra googly, extra wide, and if you looked at him you’d swear that the brightest black, that pure malice flickered on and off behind that glance. Pure pupil, no color. And you’d keep an eye on that devil, knowing that something sour was soon to erupt from within him.

I heard it, his pang. Imagine the effort it took, drunk as he was, to feel so inspired by a saxophone playing clown. Imagine it, the roar, the band, the bar, the warbles, echoes and dizziness, all conspired to sheath this one sight, this one scene that touched him. Imagine that kick, when an alcohol inflated dream was pricked, when Irwin felt his song die in his mouth. And imagine the extreme level of Irwin’s intoxication, so extreme that he couldn’t suffer a tiny interruption to a thought that could only be that precious to him.

Indeed, he looked to be plotting something much more than wrong, but in his head there was no plan. Instead, where you’d expect to find the list, the premeditation and the decision … where you’d expect to hear my little voice in battle with a very bad idea … there was music. And it wasn’t the funky band. It was more like a stampede, like Shostakovich’s Seventh, one … and two two, from tubas and bells and horns, while clarinets trilled and snares snapped time. The motive, resolute and repetitive grew louder. You’ll regret this Irwin.

He stood up.

“What are you? … C’mon , sit, man,” said Will.

But Irwin couldn’t hear him. It was too loud.

He leaned over the table as he stood, and spun out from his chair. Irwin looked straight at the stage, saw the afro on the singer’s head, the tight drummer. Then he stared through the crowd with those rash eyes. A small woman noticed it, saw that something wasn’t right in Irwin’s head, and she danced out of his way.

He moved, tripped, ricocheted off of each dancer, and opened and closed his hands as he bounced from shoulder to shoulder.

Then I tried so very hard to get through to him, to cut the music, to alter his menacing motive. I tried to make him see what would happen, to bring a little sense to his deranged song. This is wrong Irwin, that would be rude Irwin, this will only turn out bad. But one … and two two ruled, and sense was exiled.

Who am I? I’m Irwin … but only half of him. If you called me his guardian angel I’d only apologize for the piss poor job I’d done so far. There’s no halo on my head, no wings on my back. I’m just Irwin.

I’m not plugged into any heavens, nor am I a messenger between an almighty God and Irwin. I’ve no idea about Alpha and Omega. Call me Zed. I’m nothing but a sense.

I am good, though, I know that to be true. I’m everything Irwin has come to know as right. As he is only nineteen, I am too. He lives, I live. He learns, I learn. I’m both egos and the id. I’m wise and I’m always right as far as Irwin is concerned. When he sees what is right, it is because I reminded him of it. Call me third person interactive, or first person omniscient. I live the story and watch it from far away at the same time.

I affect the story too, when I’m listened to. Essence, kindness, truth, compassion, jurisprudence, karma, desire and spirit, that’s me. I’m true Irwin, the voice in his head. And I guard him only as well as he guards himself.

Like Irwin I live for jazz, for beauty, for ideals and hope, but I never run astray. When Irwin despairs I turn on the light, and when he makes a bad decision I learn too, so that next time, and there is always a next time, I can sing to him the lesson in the memory.

I am Irwin without time, without flesh, without motion. The imprint he wants to leave behind, and the tool that can help him do so. But without that flesh, that motion, that place in time, I’m essentially powerless if Irwin chooses to ignore me.

Because all I can do is dream Irwin’s life.

He lives it.

And Irwin was definitely living it without me as he bounced his way to the foot of the stage, and climbed onto the platform.

Back at the table, Will stood up, and watched.

The singer sang with her eyes closed so it took a few moments for her to realize that Irwin was there. The guitarist, the bassist, drummer and keyboard player each smiled at Irwin, laughed and mouthed ‘Yeah man.’ The crowd started to cheer and whistle, and Irwin stood as close as he could to the shut-eyed singer, and pointed his google eyes at her. She’d shut her eyes tighter, so she never saw Irwin coming.

Maybe she thought the sudden crescendo in the crowd was for her, and she dug in, wailed high tones, rich blues, soul and rhythm. And she danced harder, bent her knees deeper, shook her wild body … and bumped into Irwin.

She stopped singing when she caught the chaos in Irwin’s eyes. His hands opened, fingers pointed, and his body swayed back and forth. It almost looked like he was dancing to the music.

“Give him the mike, he wants to sing,” the keyboard player shouted to the singer.

“What?” she screamed back. It was picked up in the microphone and the crowd laughed a little and cheered louder for wobbling Irwin.

”Give him the mic.”

She heard him … and she did.

Irwin started to sway even more. That last quick shot of scotch was exploding inside of him. And I tried to get him to see the drummer’s smile, the guitarist’s sincere nod of his head. If Irwin wasn’t going to listen to me at least he could feel the music, perhaps feel some respect for this honest band. Just give the mic back Irwin.

But in Irwin’s mind that motive lingered, one … and two two, deep tuba, flutes and trills and tensions and clacking snares.

“Sing, man.”

Will started to laugh.

Irwin brought the microphone close to his lips, his head tilted into it. He stared at the singer. The crowd cheered, the keyboardist played glissandos, the drummer beat hard time, clacking the snare … and then Irwin spoke.

“Why don’t you motherfuckers shut the fuck up I’m trying to talk to my friend.”

………………………..?

Will mouthed “Oh … fuck,” under his breath.

The whistles cut off, the noise cut in half. The keyboardist and guitarist stopped playing, but the bassist and the drummer kept on going. It didn’t look like they’d made out what Irwin said.

At least a quarter of the crowd gasped, their jaws dropped. Heads shook, howls grew angrier. Irwin kept the mic close to his lips and swayed like a snapped guitar string hanging from the neck.

In the back of the bar a few guys yelled towards the exit, and pointed to Irwin, the drunk idiot on the stage. Two massive bouncers waddled through the door and split the crowd like an ax splitting butter. When Will saw them coming he jumped around the table and pushed his way to the stage. He got there first.

Irwin remained on stage, rocking back and forth. He looked the singer right in her eye, and she shot a fierce look back. She looked devastated, yet Irwin held nothing in his eyes, no malice, no regret. The singer hurt, I saw it, everyone else in the crowd saw it, and the howls and boos boomed louder.

“Irwin, hey Irwin,” said Will, who stood below his drunk friend. “C’mon man. It’s time to go.” Will looked at the singer and said, “I’m … sorry, he’s drunk.”

She turned around.

Irwin placed the mic back in its stand while the drummer and bassist kept playing the beat and the bass line, perhaps trying to the scene from turning into a lynching. The guitarist, yelled “asshole” at Irwin.

“Come on man, we have to go,” said Will.

Irwin stepped off of the stage.

The bouncers burst through the last layer of the crowd and grabbed Irwin by the arm. “It’s cool,” said Will. “We’re leaving.”

“Yes, you are,” said the taller of the bouncers. “Your friend’s a real fuck,” said the shorter.

“He’s just wasted,” answered Will.

“No excuse.”

And the three of them carried Irwin upstairs and outside into the cold night, into December. That scene had passed, the curtain descended on the black hall below the bar, and I had never even made an appearance. I was useless.

Will ran back inside to grab Irwin’s coat.

In Irwin’s mind the music faded. The cheers from University West echoed down Broadway. Blurry streaks of red chased cabs down the street, and the moon swayed over Irwin’s head.

It was early yet.

Flickr photo by Tina Hsu

© 2010, Henry E. Powderly II. All rights reserved.

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Again, I’ve used a simple motive, in this case the movement between two chords, and have tried to create a piece that has steady degree on movement without relying on harmonic changes and instead leaning on a repetitive rhythm and dynamic changes to create the mood.

It reminds me of a see-saw, or a sunflower swinging back and forth on a growing and fading summer wind.

I’m happy with the outcome, it’s peaceful.

Enjoy.

Piano Meditation 6: Piano Meditation 6

Flickr photo by Claudio.Ar

© 2010, Henry E. Powderly II. All rights reserved.

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When I woke up this morning, a few inches had already fallen, and since the snow was pretty wet it stuck to all the trees, filling my property with scores of white, twiggy knots of snow-caked branches. I ended up taking a walk through the acre of woods I have next to my house, which has seen a lot of its tress fall down this windy winter, to snap a few photos of the snow on the branches.

I figured I’d share them with you.

Enjoy.

© 2010, Henry E. Powderly II. All rights reserved.

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(UPDATE: My Twitter friend @badbadbad suggested “Writing to music,” which of course is the right thing to call these. Thanks, my friend.)

The idea is to listen to an album, a song, an orchestral work, a piano piece, a concert or any other type of musical composition and write as I’m listening to it, trying not to stop at all, but going with the movement of the piece, recording whatever thought I have that’s inspired by the music. It’s really an exercise in writing from the heart, not so much the head, and using the music to inspire ideas.

I got the idea when I started paying attention to the types of thoughts, visions, and ideas I came up with when I was listening to the music, and I found that I probably wouldn’t have had those exact ruminations if I weren’t listening to that piece of music in that chunk of time.

Last night I gave it a try while listening to The Emerson Quartet perform Shostakovich’s 5th String quartet.

Enjoy.

Shostakovich’s 5th string quartet

It’s starts like a quiet step, reminds me of when I walk upstairs to check on the little girl, leaving my slippers below, so they don’t flop and shuffle and wake her. But, then I could stomp and growl and groan or maybe scream, for joy or just to hear myself holler, and it would make no difference. The emotions are there, the loud ones, no matter how quiet I am trying to be, climbing up the stairs without my slippers.

Maybe I start back at the bottom and try again, and it’s not stairs that lie ahead, it’s somewhere else, a bridge, over a stream, over a river, or a rocky mountain pass. It doesn’t matter where it is, or how quiet I’m trying to be, because the point is I’m walking, never stopping, over rapids or up a soft hill carpeted in wildflowers.

Everywhere’s movement. Even my dogs, who sleep like quotation marks on my couch, curled in the baby doll blanket my wife wouldn’t be happy to see them sleeping on – one smells terrible and leaves the terrible smell in the blankets – they move. You can’t see it without looking closely, but it’s there, a breath, another breath, a twitch, both moving, both alive in their sleep.

How long have I been moving, forever? I try to remember a time I may have stopped, but I can’t find one, and, to be honest, this searching only makes me move faster. Even in sleep I march, through the dreams. This week I dreamed I was in a forest that looked like the suburbs, and every time I stopped to admire one of the trees I noticed it had a price tag. Some of the trees were only displays made of plastic, and they always hid some door, or some window, or some garage. Even the night in the forest, which I thought flickered with fireflies, was fake, because each time I tried to catch a glowing insect I found myself in the path of oncoming traffic.

Though, even when I stopped and sat in a pile of fallen branches that turned out to be a heap a trash waiting for the Monday pickup, I could never stop moving, not for a moment.

Soon, I was awake, listening to my little girl chant “Da da” in her crib, which I lay in bed listening too for a while, not still, but beating my heart and breathing my breath. And then I stepped out of bed. The chilly air that streams in the the winter just above the wood floor stung my toes, and I stepped into my slippers and walked to her nursery.

She smiles, and rocks back and forth, waves her tiny hand and spins the pacifier in her mouth. I’m awake and warm when I take her out the crib and nuzzle her neck, her fingers pulling at my shoulders, and smell her slightly sour breath dried on her cheek.

If there’s any chance that things stop, it’s then, when she smiles me awake. But things aren’t stopped at all, they’re moving faster than ever, time is speeding up, because last week she could hardly lift her head and the week before that she didn’t even have a name.

The morning always moves, and I end up in my car, the news boring the shit out of me, though I listen to it anyway. There are so many stories, in this world, where plots turn and twist with every human soul. Is the news wrong for singing about them, even the bad plots, the phony plots, the idiot plots?

I’d hold down the gas pedal and never let it up, which I think while listening to a news report about gas pedals that have just been recalled for getting stuck on the floor mats, if I wasn’t too afraid of killing some child at a bus stop, or a mother on her way to work, or a migrant walking his bicycle on the shoulder. A day doesn’t go by where I don’t hear about somebody being run over because the driver never let up on the gas.

At times, when I’m at a red light and spot a seagull soaring on a gust of wind, and I wonder if he can still see the sea that high up, I feel as close to stopped as I ever am, and the news report almost dims on its own. Then I think that when the light turns red, no matter how hard the guy behind me might honk and wag his fist at me, I might just stay put, let it turn green and then red again. He might drive around, but I’ll stay there, until the light changes again and then changes again, because if I can’t stop moving I might as well sit still and think about why that’s so.

Flickr photo by PIXNOIZE

© 2010, Henry E. Powderly II. All rights reserved.

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