Gravity Files



  Gravity Files

  By

  J.L. Wolf

  A collection of selected Prose and Poetry

  Copyright 2012 J.L. Wolf

  Formatted by eBooksMade4You

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  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  First Edition License Notes

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to wherever you bought it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

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  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

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  Prologue

  I call my writing Splatter. Some of the writing is about me while some pieces are observational but in the first person. The words, phrases, paragraphs, and poems come to me in bursts. And are usually created in under 15 minutes. I make no claim of quality. I write what I think and do not sensor nor edit.

  Like Jackson Pollack, and his paintings, my work goes places that are not always obvious, even to me. They are rough and at times profane, but words though haphazard are chosen carefully.

  There are purposely no titles to any of the pieces. A title suggests a mood or an explanation. I offer neither. Each piece was arbitrarily placed in the collection. No attempt was made to group the pieces by mood or feeling. The chapters are broken only into prose and poems

  Gravity Files

  Jeff Wolf

  Copyright 2011 by Jeff Wolf

  ISBN 978-1-4660-2942-2

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  Chapter 1

  ONE

  So…here I am. Writing, or not writing…. what am I doing? Ideas swirl in my head but does every idea deserve the attention of the written word? Cathartic? Stress relieving? Self indulgent? Maybe all of the above, maybe none, they are just words, words are not the real thoughts; they are filtered and painted thoughts. Painted red, or white or black, who’s feelings are these, mine or are they feelings I want to get from the reader. If they are mine they are painted in the color I think would please the reader if they were thoughts I want from the reader, they are thoughts I will never know about. Who will read this? Me…no. Others? Maybe, if I chose to share. But of course I will share, my ego demands that I share, it demands that I am told it is good. If it is not, then it’s what I expect. If it is good, then of course I expect it to be good or I would not dare it.

  Writers write, painters paint, talkers talk, I do them all but am none of these, or am I? I want the label but am embarrassed to label myself. I work hard but pretend I don’t. I try hard but pretend I don’t, I care desperately but pretend I don’t. I tell myself I don’t care, I tell others I don’t care. If I share this piece I must care, or maybe I don’t. They are just words that are meaningless to me, to others, to history, and to the future. They are the words of now; of right now of the instant I hit the keyboard.

  I call what I write splatter writing, I think of the page they way Pollack thought of the canvas. Wait no I don’t. He had a plan, his paintings tell a story, and they go places. They take the viewer on a trip. These words take the reader nowhere in particular. I can look at a Pollack all day long, and have. I can barely read the words I write. What does that say about the amount of time I spend writing words I say I don’t care about? The words I don’t edit and don’t read. I’ll tell you, the reader, it means very little. Not nothing, but very little. I have no plan, I am not Pollack I am not Rothko with his squares and lines. No I am nothing worth a comparison.

  Do I spin a phrase or choose a word or construct a metaphor better than you, the reader? Maybe, maybe not, who cares, does it bother you if I write better than you? It does not make me feel better if I know I write better than you. Maybe I don’t, it’s arrogant of me to think I write better than anyone, of course I don’t think that.

  I think of the reader, always the reader, but a writer who thinks of the reader but has no readers is like a dog than can’t bark. Sniffing around but never really communicating. I want readers but they embarrass me. What if they don’t like what I write, or worse what if they do? What if I am so good they love it and ask the terrible question of what do I do? What do you mean what do I do? If my writing is that good, can’t you tell that I am a writer? If I don’t make my living as a writer, why don’t I? Oh readers and writers, what a horrible rivalry. Readers always say they wish they could write. Writers know that writing is a curse. Like a sneeze, it has to come out. It sure is inconvenient to toil away writing words no one cares about. And in my case even I don’t care about. I’m done with this piece of writing now and I didn’t write a thing. If you read this then you’ve wasted time and now you know it. But at least you wasted less time reading it than I wasted writing it.

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  TWO

  The still water lake is my face. Reflecting life, but hiding reality, the depth is undetermined, but the surface is smooth and welcoming. Ripples cross the surface like wrinkles around my eyes. Erupting from short to long but with a sense of knowing.

  It's cold underneath. Cold and dark, does anything live here, love here.

  When I was a child I longed for the assurances of adulthood. The opinions, the knowledge that all adults possess, in adulthood I am lost. Opinions are facts that others refuse to acknowledge. Where is the wisdom, where is the Me?

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  THREE

  Growing up at dusk lets you hide in the shadows. Shards of morning light never slice this life. I live in the in between. Between the light and the dark, above the evil and beneath the holy.

  A price would be paid to wear my clothes and stand in my shoes. Pieces may be left behind; you’ll see the colors I see but not the filter through which I view them. It lives under your collar, it sleeps in your hat, it hibernates in your boot, but if it comes for you there is no escape.

  It washes over you like the feeling of new love; warm and complete. It’s comfortable and all knowing. You lose your freedom but welcome the old friend. It commands attention and begs for solitude. Blinded by fog, surrounded by fire stepping outside can break the spell. To break the spell is to lose concentration, there is clarity in the fog, a tunnel vision with a way to go that only you can see. You’ll see this from inside my clothes and from the comfort of my boots.

  Inside the cave, my lies are truth. I hide behind it; I use it to fool and to deceive. It is no longer it, it is I, my lies are my truth and I can no longer distinguish between the light and the dark. It is all dusk.

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  FOUR

  I got to play in the yard yesterday. Warm and glorious, filtered light through everlasting trees and an infinite glow of lost memories and left behind lifetimes. It felt good to be away from home. On a straight line wi
th no curve in sight, the curve was there I can see it now but for a moment in time it was straight. Straight to forever not curved back to for never. But for never is where the line ends. A circle if the truth is told and the truth is where we really play. Not in a yard, not in the sun, not in a glow, but in a circle rounding a familiar but un-manageable place.

  I’m coming home now, not in a glow but into a familiar and quiet place. I don’t want to be here but it feels right, it feels like where I belong. It will be a short stay but I will never play in the yard again.

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  FIVE

  I woke up early on the day that I died; they were looking for me in the forest and on a boat. I was there but they couldn’t see me. Nothing has really changed, I’m hiding in plain sight it is a theme of this life.

  It was strange being up so high. I've been there before but for a different reason. To go up was always the goal, down was always less than success but not always failure.

  This trip will be a ride. One-way ticket, soaring before the stillness.... and the peace, everyone tells me I’m wrong. Like a child who's yelled at too much, I don’t hear anymore. I have always been wrong, remember the times...I heard it until I didn’t, like a child.

  I did not expect the wind up here. I hate the wind. It’s a bug that annoys with no purpose. But wait, there is no wind, it’s calm, and I stand quiet and confidant, no fear, no pain. It will take one small movement and I will be flying. A sensation everyone says they want but few attempt. It’s soft at the bottom, blue, welcoming and soft.

  What shoes am I wearing? Are they comfortable? Should I have changed them? Looking down, I see only the toes but yes, they are the wrong choice, but they are comfortable. I should have worn the cheaper ones. I knew I would make a mistake, I always do.

  What is that? A stick? To far away to see, it must be bigger than a stick. Don’t hit it; wait, it will keep moving. Is it moving out or in? I want to move out, to the other side of the world. Unchallenged flotsam.

  My heel slips, I grab hold. Why did I grab? It makes no sense, so I let go and I float, it’s not noisy, it’s quiet. It’s thoughtful. It’s over.

  Dream or destiny that is the hard question, if dreams come true then nothing else ever will. Today it was a dream, but is it THE dream, MY dream. I will live another day…but die in my sleep.

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  SIX

  I’ve flown too high and tunneled to deep. The seasons arrive slowly but the expectations have been defined long in advance. Matching and managing, reaping and sowing, living and breathing without one the others are diminished, without the other the one cannot exist.

  Moving towards the sun it’s cold before you burn. The dark before the light, the night before the day, the blindness of dark, before the white light of death,

  My season’s snap like lightening rather than roll like thunder. Either or, cut and dried, black and white, failure is diminished success, and success is averted failure.

  I need to make a world of my own. Stay inside the changing seasons. Live outside the storms. Today it’s raining and I’m getting wet. I hate being wet. I want to go to the sun and be warm and dry, but there is darkness before the light. Breath, feel, be patient.

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  SEVEN

  It’s a beautiful day. Large billowing clouds surround the sun like handsome jurors in a cosmic court. We walk for the activity of walking. No destination, no direction, no expectations. My baseball cap kept the lasers streams of light from piercing my eyes directly. Instead the heat is filtered through the bill of my cap inside the shadows it’s created.

  There are others moving, some traveling. Traveling is hard, quick paced, heel to toe connection to the earth, a violent act and done with purpose. Walking is smooth, arms swinging slightly, feet set to earth as if balancing on something alive.

  We walk by myself. Unseen by others, there are always more than just me. I am a group, a multitude of me. The delighted me walks carelessly with arms swinging on soft steps. The dutiful me doesn’t walk but moves directed and with purpose.

  The physical me is lighter than air, but forced on earth by gravity. The mental me is dense, heavy and floating above the real.

  Ignoring the real is acknowledging the power of the unreal. Fighting the desire to give power to the unseen, and unintentional. I am learning to live with myself.

  The darkness cannot have me. The company I keep on solitary walks may not dominate the conversation. Dialogue becomes monologue and monologue becomes prophecy. A prophecy of desire that becomes hope that leads to reality. I am walking today, and will for a long time.

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  EIGHT

  It’s so dark. Heavy and thick darkness, the kind you feel when you are in the forest with no moon. You recognize that there is infinite space around you but the darkness has you cornered in a closet. You can’t move, you can’t breath and you won’t talk. The darkness is around me it is in me it IS me.

  The dawn is cold; shards of light slice through the darkness, but can’t illuminate all the corners. There are many corners deep and sharp and black. Going around the corners is easy. Going into the dark is easy. Not comfortable but easy. It’s easy to know where safety lies. Safety lies in darkness and the thoughts that come from dark places. The safety lies in the surety and absolution that I am in control of my destiny.

  It feels powerless and lonely to be in the dark but retains a feeling of pride of ownership. I can’t give it away nor would I want others to have it.

  Rays of light are beginning to feather out through the dark. It feels warm and life giving but not always comfortable. The light feels foreign, like another language like another land. It is a light of distant familiarity like remembering a warm summer day in the middle of a snowstorm.

  I’m feeling the light now. I can’t always see it, but I know it is there. I see white inside the black; I see life where I thought nothing lives. I am waking up from a long restless sleep and am ready to take on what comes my way but I will see it coming I will fight the comfort of the dark and the assurance of the corner.

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  NINE

  Mountains are special. Their peaks are the top of the dream. Their base is the possibility. The space between base and peak is where the truth lies. It lies in the physical pain, the emotional uncertainty and the mental strength or lack there of.

  The top is where eagles soar and heroes live. I live there too, but in a dream. I dream of the top; soaring, and living untouched by what use to be. I have seen the top, through thick glasses, clear from a distance but invisible from where I stand. I stand in the valley, physically capable, mentally strong and emotionally disabled.

  The Valley is long and narrow and flat. I walk a long time before hitting another wall, but they surround me. Like a fish in a barrel, I can reach the top with the help of others but alone I will live in a circle.

  It’s comfortable on the valley floor, these seasons change and the moods are fluid like the river that carves my trail. Walking side to side I will hit walls quickly, Walking in length they come more slowly, but they come and the longer I walk the harder the rock is at he end of the valley.

  Change is not with the seasons; it’s with the ages. In this place, a season is a glance, a blink. I have walked along time on this valley floor venturing right and left moving forward and falling back, but the floor is where unrest and comfort are allies. The world is uncertain, the walls promise hope and achievement but the valley, oh the valley, it is stable and solid. You can’t fall from the valley.

  Falling is a risk, not a certainty and I want to risk it all. The slippery edge of happiness, the valley is where things fight to survive; so far I have not lost a fight but am always moments from a punch. I have help this time; I am not the lone Pawn in the center of the board. I have Knights and a Queen that is pushing yet protecting every border I cross.

  I know nothing of the future but I am learning th
at length and width of the valley are not the ends. It’s where the adventure begins.

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  TEN

  Moving into the winter of my life the biting chill of the future does not concern me. The summer was warn and full of hope. Youthful ignorance and emerging maturity were enveloped in a foggy clarity of knowing exactly the moment with no thought to the outcome.

  With glasses over my eyes and decades under my feet the clarity is no less foggy but the thought is in the outcome not the immediate. Knowledge is gained through success not failure but experience comes from pain and loss. Perspective and understanding come from passing seasons.

  The past offers comfort in the experiences and people we met along the way. In the past there is no bad, there in only, ‘was’. And ‘was’ always puts a smile on my face. We can never get the past back, we can never get is from was. I smile and the chilly winter of my life is warmer because of what once was.

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  ELEVEN

  Realization hits hard but creeps up.