Chartomancy

Divining motives is a curious business.  There are obvious, broad strokes of intent, like Van Gogh, and there are conversations that seem oblique in the moment, as if you were looking at le Grande Jatte from three or four inches away, but like a work of pointilism, the picture becomes clear from a distance, with time.  And then you have the unclear expanse of uncertainty....a dark place where you have to feel your way out, like some endless hallway in the night, skimming fingers along the wall for doors, looking for scraps of light, or familiar sounds to guide you where you want to be.  And these indefinite markers could be so subtle as not to be noticed, the way a book was held, something flickering behind the eyes, a text message that came from nowhere and the specific words in it, or all the myriad things you saw but didn't remember, passing into the oblivion of your unconscious mind.  And the things noticed, you dissect them to try and understand.  Was there anything to understand?  Reading into nothing and imposing reasons.  Lighting a fire of meaning in the darkness of mere being.  Writing yourself a story.  Though maybe intuition trumps logic and takes us through alleys and hidden doors otherwise unavailable or jammed, to take us where we need to be, or, more like wayward detectives, maybe we're drunk on curiosity or  hubris or whiskey (most likely all three), and find ourselves suddenly in one of those alleys, poorly lit, about to get beaten bloody and knocked out.  Still, you keep going on, in whatever instance, ready to deconstruct, to pick apart, to find the bones, how they fit together, the elusive reason.

Archimboldo

Random

I think it may be possible (though I am not entirely sure) to gage someone's loneliness by the amount of frozen pizza they eat.

Whiteout

I watched the snow build up all day, deeper and deeper, smoothing out the landscape impeccably.  I wondered if people were working, and if so, where?  Where were people going?  Sometimes one could hear them moving at speeds that seemed too fast, and looking to the road saw nothing, but equally often a random glance would produce a car, (or the ghost of a car, because it made no sound) which would vanish into the distance.  Imagining the wind as a physical presence beating on the walls and windows and doors and kicking up now outside in a frenzy is only entertaining for so long, so I decided to read.  Some time passed and it was dark when I lifted my eyes from the words and frame I'd couched in.  The inky black window.  And my room was full of quiet things, unobtrusive things that seemed possibly grateful to have warm alcoves and security.  And the lights were dim, and against the pale walls of green, the light cast back from them seemed to illuminate and shade at the same time, some brine pale light.  Something about the light, and the thickness of the air made me think of the sea, and how I love the sea.  But not what most humans consider the sea, thinking of the surface, of endless generating waves that are symbols of madness and defeat, rather, the seabed.  That other earth, with it's plains that weren't plains, and valleys that weren't valleys, and cliffs that weren't cliffs.

Graphing

I'm not sure how to describe it, this mood.  Stagnant.  Like being surrounded by the sick and the dying, or the people who won't die but aren't really alive.  Ideas shriveling and turning to dust, hearing things that make you not want to think, or reading too much, or drinking too much.  When you don't miss being touched.  Feeling like you're on the losing end of some vast, imperceptible struggle.  Watching television.  Not sad, but not happy, when the venom dries up and consuming flame dies down to embers.  Weighed down by obligation and guilt, not sure where one ends and the other begins.  Knowing that even vocalizing the shape of it is over-indulgent, luxurious, work of boredom.