Water wed with wine and ghost.

Tonight I watched Thrice play, for probably the last time ever.

Nothing but this slow trek.

I write songs, but they arrive upon me in ways that don't feel like writing. I suppose my writing works in a similar way. I've started working on a new album this week, after being delayed by a hand injury coming from either a serious brawl or a window frame dropping on my fingers, followed by the demands of coursework, which were then followed by a period of doing nothing but sleeping and watching every film. Now, to start, I have been collecting all the song ideas I will use, separating them from the ideas that will be saved for the next one to be made later this year. But this collection is out of little voice memos I have left to myself. When I start a song, it arrives upon me, most often when I do not even have an instrument near by. It comes as fragments sometimes, but with a full sense of instrumentation and atmosphere. And I sing all these parts into my memos before I lose them again, my voice making up for lacking the lushness that sounds in my mind. This is how my stories come out as well. With these songs, though, as I listen back to them in the sun of my front porch, I hear all the things in the background that return me to those moments. Driving in my car towards home as the sun was setting orange this last autumn. My shower still springing after I skipped out of it. The crack of my parent's fireplace late at night after Christmas, while the good Jimmy Stewart despairs in the background through It's a Wonderful Life. Some birds, some dog, some engines. On one, I am walking the sidewalk, and I briefly run into someone I know, interrupt myself to say hello, then restart. Then I pass a group of elegantly graying women in hairspray and heels and pretend a conversation with someone at the other end. There is a kind of magic in the way a song can fall upon you, like how Michael felt "Billie Jean" drop on his dashboard while driving his car, but the real moments are in this string of days along which these songs have been lit.

The subtle electric fire.

Around all of this is the passing of seasons. While people speak and then don't speak, as eyes light and then dim, while all the world's souls swerve about each other and then retreat, there are the roots, the light, and the winds. Their movement, the way they change the world, blows about our dust, our skin shed. I have left my flecks of hope in pockets about my homes. There I have placed my fires. They are centers where I danced in the arms of those I knew. Here I have placed mine in the open air on a downtown street near buses and busy markets, but all those past sparks still know and flicker with my movements. Change is what makes the world the perpetual same. But on the end of each night, spent late with the moon until the birds start to wake up and greet each other, what happens to me is my one habit. I get up from my seat and let my dog out the door into the backyard, this prince who was our boy. While he is out, I clean my teeth, loosen my clothes, and pour some cold water. And when I am ready I open the door again, letting the night in on the squeak of hinges. I stand with it for a moment, or sometimes call out with a low whistle, and then listen to the bound and breath of that boy racing from the yard. His black fur in the night skips over every back step and inside. This is the one point around which each day swings, the quick and quiet gait of habit that comes at me through the darkness.

Sail with every wind.

Something of the house when I come back to it late this night. The windows, opened that afternoon to let in the warm, wild winds, are open still. Once the sun went, the currents filled in my absence with the pulse and breath of a new feel for the rug at my feet. The winds knew of my afternoon, and of the rending brightness that turned a corner towards me with birds in her arms. And now with the last drink, I stand inside the whirl of my living room as those beams of breeze, phantoms, build themselves around me. I think that they know more, and listen to look through that thought. Their hands still flicker, tumble about my collar, and the heat of my face slowly strikes a match with the cool of coffee-coloured strands and shapes of sweet dark that billow in. There is goodness out there, bustling and elegant, and it flows here in my home as I stand still to hold its spill upon my palms.

Yeah, for a little while.

This past weekend the Nephew's Basketball Association came to town for a provincial tournament. They were all eight or nine or ten, and it is strange seeing how good these small people can play. Their supporters are very enthusiastic.

(The blog compresses videos really terribly.)

Champs. My boy is #5.

Emblazoned.

There is a second gunman.

Winking in the dark.

"After that kind of night, that company, I was stopping off at the convenience store for a chocolate bar, because after all of it there is nothing else to want and to be had. What kind, well, it was a Caramilk, the best to take your time with, it's true. Well, there was a lineup at the store. Three people in a row were buying gum, and a woman was behind me picking up a bag of chips. She was in a jogging outfit, so maybe she was cheating on her regime, or maybe she was giving herself a gift. Either way, any person deserves that. I had to get to the market, and asked the store clerk if he knew where it was from here. He shrugged, but the woman with the chips told me, 'Keep down this street three blocks, turn left and keep going, you can't miss it.' 'Okay, thanks,' I said, 'Thank you. Your backpack is open, by the way.'"