Started testing/prototyping new sound sculpture.
I have the most beautiful bird house in my bathroom, sitting directly next to my electric toothbrush. In it lives a small yellow bird: I believe she is some sort of sterling that has accidentally been painted yellow from a slight miscalculation while flying low over a freshly painted center line of a city street. No matter, she dodges in and out of my bathroom with dexterity and something close to acrobatic wit. Sometimes I think I can feel in my skull the moments she joins other birds in a murmuration or some otherwise dense cloud of cascading wings.
She usually leaves on outings while I brush my teeth, when the vibrations from my toothbrush make her wings silent and any sort of peep she makes in the way of a courteous goodbye, disappear into mimed action. It is only as she hops out onto the peg-doorstep of her home that I notice her feathers are a bit clogged with paint and that her head alone is a fresh helmet of grey/brown feathers; delicate and laid down like salmon presented on ice at a fish mongers booth who believes all things, at some level, look like scales of a fish.
I believe the sound of the vibration of my toothbrush is a lot like her experience among the swarm of other birds. It is complete but also disorienting; a ritual that maybe only appears to be fun.
After she leaves, and my toothbrush has stopped making small explosions in my thinking, I wonder if she worries about her dry-paint coat; this is pretty much the only point of reference I have of her life outside of my bathroom. I know that story of the center line of the city and sometimes feel like we are deeply connected through this knowledge. But our relationship is a bit like a constant stream of generic Thank You notes that I’m trying to make matter.
At night I try to pass on some bubbling words in between the suds of a toothpaste mouth; my teeth dishes in a sink overflowing with too much soap and hot water. She peers at me with removed interest and hops twice on her peg before disappearing into her cedar home.
The other night I realized, for the first time, that my thoughts don’t fly like I once thought.
They drift and bob.
A bit like seals in kelp forests, surfacing to catch glimpses of the sun.
In the last week I've heard of 3 different people getting a dog.
One is a small robot looking dog with unblinking eyes purchased by a single man. He had it in a box, which looked a bit like an off-brand Happy Meal, in the back of his truck.
One is a "wolf puppy" (not my words) purchased by a son for his mom. This purchase was part of a home protection plan, which I assume is most notable for the time delay in it being part of a viable security measure. It's a bit like buying a home security camera that won't be operational for a few months due to noise in the data line.
A third friend texted me about her dog purchase (Acquisition?) while I was on the number 18 bus around 5th and Wall. She and her boyfriend bought it (acquired it?) together. When the text arrived I was starring out the window and noticed a small tube of a dog (like it had been a different dog at a previous point in time, but had recently been pushed through a 4" piece of PVC pipe, resulting in all of its features being compressed towards a central axis) in a patchwork hoodie of pastel fabrics, strut along the sidewalk with bright pink painted toenails.
I think all 3 dogs I recently learned about have something to gain from becoming friends with this dog killing the outdoor runway game.
It has no meaning the bowl and teeth, only that it is the available space on the desk to place you. We are both posing somewhat with expressions that seem to be answering the question, "did you remember to turn off the oven?". (And for some reason it does make me think of a time I did forget to turn off the oven over an entire 3 day period in a one bedroom apartment in Baltimore, unsure why the apartment was so warm, or butter was melting on top of the stove in its storage dish. I assumed it was something to do with the east coast climate I was unaccustomed to.) But this picture is clumsily perfect in the way someone trying to open a car door while holding coffee, donut, and newspaper, manages to drop everything all at once, including keys, but just laughs forgetting they live amongst so many people.
These shadows cut like broken plates during memories of arguments, sharpened on the stones of building edges; finger nails dragged along folded paper to make lines crisp for origami frogs to bounce with sure feet onto fire escapes that are only secured by one bolt.
Fear not because these frogs are light.
