Trailhead

 
    Cirrus clouds spot the sky above the trailhead. Turkey vultures circle with their spread wings eclipsed by sun rays. The clouds resembled puffs of smoke left by early incendiaries set off every July since before he could remember.
    Something on the ground is dead and the turkey vultures know it. They float, adjusting their wings to the erratic airflow, staring down at the Earth. They are waiting for the perfect time to land. They know something is dead down there and he knows it too, but they know where it is and they wait.
    He knows he is near. Turkey vultures in the sky are not uncommon near trailheads. It could be a dead fish someone tossed on the bank. Someone catches a fish with a hook and removes the hook from the fishes mouth and looks at the fish and throws it on shore without much thought at all. The fish eventually suffocates and dies. He begins walking on the trail.
    His father once told him the neighbors toss the remains of the fish they clean on the west bank of the river. Soft pale gray gelatinous bubbles of stuff that should resemble viscera yet barely does. His father told him they do so to attract coyotes. The neighbors wait on the east bank for the coyotes to arrive. The coyotes find these morsel with their superior snouts. His father told him coyotes, canines in general, use their nose the way people use their eyes. It is how they remember. It is how they mark their territory. It is how they find the things they need, and when they can, find the things they want.
    "When the coyotes arrive the neighbors shoot them." His father said.
    "Why?" he asked.
    "They are an evasive specifies."
    "Compared to what?"
    He watched the familiar buildings of the city of Lafayette be demolished this summer. He watched
unfamiliar structures sprawl across the patches of forest and farmland of his childhood. With untold man and machine power these structures altered his childhood landscape forever. A personal, but not unfamiliar thing to see and remember. His father only stared at him.
    "What do they do with the carcasses?"
    "They just leave them" his father said.
    He only stared at his father.
    "Eventually the turkey vultures take care of them" his father said.
    "Sky Burial."
    "What?"

    He walks on the trail, occasionally picking up a rock or touching the bark of an unfathomably old tree. He is in no hurry. It could be a coyote.
    Turkey vultures rarely have the opportunity to eat a human body in domesticated America. If someone is going to kill another person they better have a back up plan other than simply leaving the body where it lays. The only time turkey vultures have an opportunity to find a human body during their constant pursuit of dead flesh is when a person kills them self, on purpose or by accident, or a person kills another without forethought and then panics. Even then, the vultures would have to beat out the police and the hospital and the human impulse to care or worry about someone or something one does not constantly see. Remember?
    He picks up his pace on the trail. He moves past trees. The trees move past him. Light dances in prisms and beams through the leaves and branches surrounding him. It probably isn't a human.
    Beyond and above the dead matter he walks upon he sees life sprouting from the ground. He thinks of who he wishes were here with him. They are few and mostly women. He smiles walking on the path. "Hello" he says out loud to no one and anyone. "Hello."
    Something is dead on the trail and he knows and the turkey vultures know and he ignores it for the moment and the turkey vultures keep circling. The mysteries of nature and humanity remain hidden on the trail by the river. He wants to find what the turkey vultures are circling.

From the Work Manual:
Take a step. What foot did you use? Consult the manual for accuracy.
Step again. What foot now? Consult the manual for accuracy.
You must wear this and that to keep your job.
    A couple walks into the [job] you are [job]ing at. They say "Wilson for two" and you rush over to greet them because they are old and most likely have some money in a town where most worry about money.
    "How are you folks, tonight?" you ask according to the manual. "Would you like to hear the wine specials?" You ask according to the manual.
    "Yes" they say.
    What if they say no?

    The trail becomes wider, pushing away the organic matter to matted river sand. He is close to the dead matter the turkey vultures circle and  they wait for him to be gone or edible. He finds dead fish guts spoiled in the sun. Ants explore the globes of gray viscera specked with dirt and river silt. Flecks of dry leaves. Chunks of loose bark. He finds a dead coyote near the fish guts. It's fur separates from the muscle and sinew. Guts, viscera, internal organs exposed and bleeding in the sand. Dark red and light orange swirl in the sandy brown trail. He remembers. He takes a picture of it with his phone.
    Violent death is televised. It is not something he sees often and he knows that when he sees it in person.
    He walks on the trail alone. There are coyotes close to the city again and there are people in town who want to kill coyotes simply to know one more is dead. They see televised death and think good. They see televised death and laugh. They see televised death and believe it is lying to them.
    It's just television.
    It's televisions fault.
    Television causes televised death so why allow television?
    No more television!
    No more television!
    Televised death is death with a screen.
    Televised violent death is violent death with a screen.
    It is still death, There is only one death and something or someone will figure out what to do with it.
    His legs, thighs, calves stretch and loosen. He is staring at his feet. His shoes bob back and forth. The trail is a brown treadmill. He is scrolling the brown dirt alone until he stops and looks up.
    An opening in the trees. A wooded island with a shallow stream separating it from the bank. It is close to the shore with a rudimentary gap. A gateway made by feet and hand alone. It is a small vista on the trail and when the sun is shining bright and to the side it resembles what heaven must resemble to most Hoosiers. How many stories would Mark Twain  have written about this island if he happened to know that it exists? A local boy and a local girl sneak off to a hidden watering hole. A group of boys meet at the island at night to discuss secret plans and actions. A family decides to go swimming and fiasco ensues as they clash with nature because they are from town and rarely visit the trailhead. A dead body at the rivers edge, a mystery and investigation follows.
    He takes a picture with his phone and thinks of someone he wishes were here with him. Fleeting moments. He begins to walk back towards the trailhead at a peaceful gait, all of his thoughts unraveled for him to consider.
 

Trayvon's Tweets

    Imagine yourself at seventeen years old, trying in whatever way you can to fit into your surroundings and look cool to your friends. This time around its different, though. You have things like social media: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Your young mind doesn't quite comprehend the massiveness of possibility these digital webs hold so you just post random dumb things about weed and pussy which come to your mind because you are a hormonal, anxious, dumb teenager just as every teenager is at some point in their life. Then, instead of growing up and becoming an adult and possibly changing your silly young outlook on life based on the only environment you know in reality, you are shot to death. What exactly happened is still up for dispute, but the one thing that is for certain is that you, 17 year old American male, are dead from  gunshot wounds inflicted by a middle aged American male, one George Zimmerman. You do not care that he is acquitted of the responsibility of your death because you are dead, you no longer have the ability to care about anything. You are someone's son that was shot to death. What exactly is the point someone is trying to make by collecting the foolish tweets you posted before your death and presenting them as something relevant after your death? They're only words, barely even that probably due to the dismal educational system you were forced into. Is collecting and presenting them as relevant implying that the dumb things you wrote justifies the fact that you are dead?

This hatred in abstract is unfathomable to me. It seems both disconnected and abhorrent enough to continue to antagonize. 

Aaron C. Molden

This is a Blog Post (2)

 
    Here I sit writing again, drawing again, drinking again: A bottle of Goose Island 312. I am upstairs and she is downstairs. I'm guessing she is thinking of me somewhere in her mind, but maybe not. She's on my mind and I am writing it down in order to concentrate on what I am really thinking about.
    I see the dark side of things easier than her.
    She is irritated because she doesn't want to hear those things all the time. She doesn't want to be that pessimistic or even hear pessimistic words uttered in her presence.
    This seems strange to me because I consider myself an optimistic person most of the time. My favorite author is Kurt Vonnegut and that is a pretty average American choice for Favorite Author, at least if social media offers any small nugget of rational evidence for humanity in the ocean of white noise that is called Social Media. Favorite Author is a message in a bottle.
    I wonder if she wants me to apologize for what I made her hear: my opinion on something.
    We disagree on something.
    I won't apologize because my mind still believes my opinion. I would say it again if I am as lucid in voice as I was at the time. I wanted to be heard completely during a moment when I could be so complete about a single thought. This doesn't happen often when I am engaged with other people dying to let me know what they think about what I'm saying before I'm done saying it. That is the core of my anxiety, I think. I am guilty of dying to let one know what I think before they finish what they are saying completely. I am guilty of this with anyone I am around for an extended period of time. I want them to know what I know if they do not already and I want to figure out the best way I can do that when I am around and my college education happens to kick in.
    Art Education at Purdue University. An establishment I regularly openly mock for being ignorant of reality. Explain to me the difference between that American institution of education and the mafia. Anyone.
    Mitch Daniels's Cronies on the Exponents front page, an independent student newspaper at Purdue University. Summer of 2013 in Lafayette, Indiana.
    College taught me to try, but not how to try, so there is a lot of trial and error.
    Feynman said how, not why and we are complete opposites. I appreciate that dead guy, though he thought differently. The Manhattan Project.
    I'm in love with another girl. She who is downstairs knows. I think she knows it. I suspect she knows it better than me. She is more cognizant of the love and affection she receives.
    Before I started writing, I finished making a necklace for a girl that I am occasionally head over heels about when my mind meanders until I find her in there. I wrote this girl a letter about the necklace before it even had a chain. I misplaced the pendant. I made another pendant, before the first was found. I'm going to send her, far away from me, the second pendant, now with a chain. I think she will like it better than the first one because I studied color theory in high school and college.
    Q: Why did I do that?
    A: Because it felt right at the time.
    The first pendant is without a chain, more textured from the wear and tear of traveling with me on one of the most memorable journeys I have had in a very long time. I was bad at making jewelry in college (I did in fact take a jewelry class.) Everything was too small and too precise to one thing. I've always been quite assertive in explaining everything instead, in any way I could, even if it is wrong somehow. Right or wrong, but hopefully complete.
    "The Art of the Gift Package" would be the title of my embarrassing self-help book.
    "I Like Dogs Because I Understand Them Without Trying" would be another title I'd choose in a more drug-addled mind.
    "The Art of Liking, But Losing at Pool and Chess: An Underdog Story" by Goofball Magoo.
    "Life's Funny." Probably already the title of a book. I'll check the book section at Goodwill the next time I am there.
     None of this matter unless someone appreciates it. I appreciate it even if it annoys me on occasion. I try to appreciate, and maybe tinker with it when I feel I can. I either make static or something to appreciate other than static, such is life. A life where you can think the way you can so long as you let people think the way they can and do what they choose to do, but not in your backyard if you really don't want it.
    If you are an artist, follow who you appreciate. Keep following because you appreciate them. You appreciate every layer and it brings you some solidarity that they exist. They really exist. Let science explain the how and simply feel the ecstasy of something when you finally can.
    "Note the Decomposition" Angelica Huston said in The Royal Tennebaums.
    Artist, Architect, Anthropologist, Archaeologist, Aaron. Aaron writes these things and makes a false idol. His older brother up on Mount Sinai, a subject of Archaeology on The History Channel since time immemorial in a 20 something male's mind.
    The History Channel has shows about noodling for fish, now. I think of my high school band teacher who was fond of military marches, diet coke, and noodling for fish.
    There are people you do not care about, but why?
    There are people you hate, but why?
    Because you're human, I think, but who am I?
    I'm not you, Bukowski, but I know you. I am glad to know you.
    I think I know a lot of people because I appreciate what I hear and see, when I decide to appreciate it, because I feel it is time to think of something other than myself.
This is when I decide to make lists:
-Mail my letter and necklace to her.
-Focus on Foam City, The Drawing Board, performance and education.
-Draw the things I've been ask to draw by people I appreciate, because they ask me to draw, even though I will anyways.
-Mail a lot more things I make and remind me of people I love and miss.
-Exercise
-Smile at the proximity.
-Keep trying even though you are out of fuel right now.
-Get rid of your unnecessary expectations when you simply don't need them anymore.
-Enjoy something.

Thank You.

Aaron C. Molden

Dear Diary

Dear Diary,
 
     I woke up on the dirty vinyl floor of a friend's bathroom. My underwear were wrapped around my knees and my blouse was unbuttoned when my eyes blurred open to the bare light above me. I could feel that. My eyes took longer than my mind to adjust to the situation. I knew, before I could see anything clearly, I needed to write about what has happened and how I feel about it. It has been a long time since I've written anything.
    Last night was a rare thing for me. A rare thing, but not an unknown thing: a night I am familiar with, but only through feeling. I got drunk at a party. A boy who barely decided what he was wearing that night, but still managed to look somehow sexy, due to some glitch in young male American's psyche, started talking to me. Budget American Male Model started hitting on me and, as the night progressed, I followed the rules of pretty girl looking to get fucked at the end of the night. BAMM fucked me at the end of the night, or at least my night. It was a fuck I only know in abstract after the fact.  A fuck I only feel after the fact. A fuck I feel completely backwards. It feels as if I was never there.
    I need to write what is on my mind.

    After homeschooling failed when I was a teenager my parent's sent me to a girl's school. They were always over-ambitious about my education, but eventually unwilling to really put in the parenting effort. At the girl's school I didn't learn much more than how to push other girl's buttons in various ways. But Mrs. Kendricks, my English teacher for both years I was there, helped me realize that writing my thoughts down helped me understand not only what I am feeling, but also what I am thinking. She also tried to teach me to write properly (which BLAH! what does that even mean?) She helped me appreciate the coded evidence of who I was at a specific moment. Writing in my diary helped me understand.
    I chose English in college because I continued to love it, even if I still didn't care about the rules most of the time. I kept a journal the whole time. I mostly wrote about Maxwell.
 
    Freshman year I was exposed to a truth that exists within many American girls reality. I never thought it would really happen to me, but I kind of always understood it could happen to me. And then it happened to me. I was cornered in the business hallway by two boys. One of them had a Letterman jacket on. The other one was smaller in baggy black clothes. I never told anyone what happened. My memory of it remains the same. The boy in the Letterman jacket took my virginity, even though that claim means less and less each day.
     I think about the reverse, though. "Tonight's the Night" sung by Rod Stewart. Gross.
     I write a joke because I know I should hate the experience, but part of me doesn't. I hate the boy in the Letterman jacket and the boy in the black baggy clothes, but not the experience. If I ignored the whole situation outside the feeling of it, it would only be different. If I ignored the whole situation and juxtaposed my own personal perfect reality with my imagination, it would be both different and good, possibly great. If I could learn from the situation and eventually find the right people, it would finally feel both good and real.
    I started spending most of my time with Maxwell after that. And soon after that was when my parents made there dreadful attempt at home schooling me.
    The shorter boy in the baggy black clothes just stood and watched. That still seems pathetic.

    Everything with Maxwell seemed hyper real. We were driven by adrenaline and endorphin for a period of time that seems longer than possible, now that I am older, even if I still feel young sometimes.
    Sometimes is abstract. Occasionally, abstract turns out to be vivid when one is in the appropriate (or inappropriate) state.
    No other part of my life has such sustained vividness as the time I spent with Maxwell. Until that vividness became too real. Maxwell had a friend, Samuel. Samuel was dumb. Maxwell explained it was about me and him and Samuel would remember it, but never understand it. Maxwell explained that is what made Samuel perfect. It didn't make sense to me at the time, but I agreed, and I regret it to this day.
    A strap on dildo.
    Maxwell staring into my eyes.
    Dakota Figg bent over.
    Samuel, with his camera phone, a black rectangle blocking his face.
    Me in a strap on dildo.
    How can that ever feel right in reality?
    Is that why I seek the abstract?
    Maxwell seemed entirely diabolical that Monday afternoon. Anytime Samuel was around Maxwell seemed to love me in a way that he could conger in no other way, and we were young. But that Monday afternoon, he was not anyone I thought he could be. He was the boy I hate in the baggy black clothes and this time around he had another friend watching, and this time around I was the boy in the Letterman jacket.
    I went to a girl's school. I went to college. I wrote and rewrote about the experience whenever I thought I needed to write about. Dakota killed his mother and was shot and killed by the police. Eventually, after a lot of hard years I married. A professor in Political Science, among other things. I have not talked to Maxwell since.
 

    This doesn't have to be something I only understand in broad strokes and high contrast. This doesn't have to be something I only understand objectively through blurry visions. This can be whatever I want it to be so long as I manage to keep my wits about me. These things don't have to end up toxic all the time.
    Even after I write these words, I still miss Maxwell. Every idea he had seemed visionary and at a time when most boys I knew seemed like they didn't have any ideas at all, much less their own ideas. He was scary smart and that was the opposite of the boy in the Letterman jacket and the boy in the baggy black clothes. They were scary dumb.
    Maxwell made me confront my own personal vision of hell from a different perspective. Not my perspective. I should hate the experience, but part of me doesn't. I hated Maxwell at the moment, but that hatred eventually faded with distance and time. I didn't know how I felt about Samuel, with his black phone partially blocking his face, and Dakota bent over in front of me at the time.
    Now, as I write, they both seem pathetic.

I have never talked to anyone about this experience. I never told my husband about it. I never told my parents about it. I never even talked to Maxwell about it. I don't bring it up and other people do not bring it up, even though the evidence of it existed for public viewing by anyone who happened to stumble upon it online. This evidence was quickly flagged and removed soon after it was posted. After it happened I put it out of my memory for as long as I could forget.
    I still have anxiety about writing about it.
    How it is possible to feel more guilty about words than actions?
    Is it because the actions somehow feel more abstract than words?
    I was fucked on a bathroom floor last night by a stranger during a party. This sentence seems more vulgar than what happened, but that is exactly what  happened. Things do not always have to be toxic, but I have very little evidence to prove otherwise. This can't be all my fault.
    Writing helps.
    Thank you, diary.
    Sincerely,
    Sarah.

Modern Warfare

    There you are, sitting in your room on the gaming chair you got for Christmas when you were a teenager. You're living with your mother and you've been playing Modern Warfare since you woke up four hours ago, around noon. Your friend texts you -wanna go to the vp get some 40s- and for a moment you think even drinking will not get you out of your chair.
    You sigh and text your friend -ok- stand up and decide what you have on is good enough. What do you have on?
    -be right over- your friend texts back and after you wait on the porch five minutes, in the sun, becoming more irritated by the second you are not playing Modern Warfare at this precise moment in your life, in your chair, in your room, at your mother's house, your friend finally arrives.
    "Hey dude" he says. He drove here even though he lives just down the street. You wonder why it took him five minutes to get here. "Get in" he says and you think about how much time it will take you guys to drive to the VP instead of walking. You suggest walking, it just makes sense. You and your friend remain in entropy for a moment. He finally agrees to walk down the hill. You feel good about this for some reason, as if you have somehow made the world better in the only way you can, though you.
    It is hot today, but you were not aware. You've been inside since you woke up, playing Modern Warfare in your air-conditioned room. Your friend mentions Xbox One. You are sweating and the sweat bothers you. It feels unnatural. You and your friend are both Xbox users. "It's bullshit" he says. "It's like they're saying 'fuck you' to their users."
     "That's why I have a Playstation" you say. "Sony wouldn't do that to us." You know everyone needs options.
     You and your friend reach the parking lot of the VP. You ask your friend if he is paying. He says he paid last time. You say you'll pay next week when you get your first paycheck from your first job since you graduated. You took a course in Erotic Mysticism. He shrugs and you both enter the market.
    "But seriously, why would they do that?" You friend asks.
    "Money dude. The money is in the corporate world." You are annoyed he is so naive. "We're clients, dude, not gang members."
    When you say "gang member" a tall young black man walks into the store. He is wearing long denim shorts you thought were cool when you saw them in Klondike Middle School off of Sagamore Parkway, now slashed diagonally once more by the rerouting of U.S 231. He is wearing an A shirt, a wife beater, an inexpensive pack of clothing sold at Walmart, Target, Meijer, blah blah blah. You think about shopping at H&M. "Dude, don't say gang" your friend says. You fake a forced repression of a laugh that is also fake quietly. You and your friend are observers. Tourists.
     "'Sup guys?" he says. The black man says "'Sup guys?" and you only stare at him.
    You think this is it, all those racist jokes you indulged in with your white friends. You only have white friends, but that's really not your fault because you meet who you meet. There is Stevie, but you don't hang out very often, you just see him when you see him and he's cool, he doesn't care about the racists jokes, he knows they're just jokes, he knows. He's not a nigger you think and instantly believe the young black man in the Walmart shirt and jean shorts you wished you had in middle school, who just entered the VP you are in, knows you thought the word nigger. What are you wearing?
    You think this is it, everything you screamed into your headset while playing the electric paintball match that is Modern Warfare. You said those things and he knows, this black man knows.
    You think this is it, he's going to rob this place and you, but not your friend, who managed to slip out of the store and is currently lighting up a cigarette outside.
    You could stop this and be a hero.
    You could be a villain for the same reason.
    You are not a hero. You are not a villain. You will comply and live another. "'Sup guys" he said.
    You and him stand in entropy for a moment. The bored brown brown man behind the counter strums his finger by the cash register. "What can I get you?" the brown clerk asks the black man. The black man turns away from you and asks the clerk for a pack of Parliaments. Your mind sighs, but your mouth does not. You buy two bottles of expensive wine you have never heard of with the money your mom gave you earlier in the week. Only until you start getting paid. You forgot to get money from your friend.
    "Wanna play Modern Warfare?" Your friend asks when you exit the VP, looking forward to drinking your new liquid experience.

    Are you the next generation?
    Why do I know you so well?
    What are you going to do?
    Do you have a girlfriend?
    "Why not?" The old woman asked on your first day at your first job at a restaurant. She has worked there for thirty years, she says. It's a job between Modern Warfare.

    The black man who bought the Parliaments at the VP is having a great day. He's visiting his baby's mother and his grandparents have baby Tyrone for the day. He has grandparents just like you. He has people he cares about and he knows he has his vices.
    He is a man who thinks about the world he lives within and wonders where he fits in it. He once practiced rapping with some friends in high school, but he's decided that he was never meant to be a real rapper. It was mostly just for fun and to pass the time. Sometimes when he has drinks with his friends, his old friends, they listen to the music they loved so feverishly when they were younger. They have a friend Ron, who raps in clubs around town, mostly Jerilee's Pub. Ron's moniker is 'RONN. When Ron hangs out with him and his friends, they tell him how dope he is, but still make fun of him occasionally when he's with them and sometimes when he is not. "The rap game chose him" they say and bust out laughing. Sometimes, if it just makes sense, if they drink just the right amount of alcohol, or smoke just the right amount of marijuana, they'll rap together again. They'll reunite as brothers. They'll rap with Ron or 'RONN, attempting to remember  the lyrics because they haven't listened to the burnt CD Ron gave them in several months.

    You assume they call each other brothers.

    "Do you have a brother?" The old lady asks on your first day of work at a restaurant.
    "No" you said.
    "Why do I know you so well?" the old lady asks. "Are you sure you don't have a brother?"
    You do not have anyone you call brother. You call your friends dude or man or guy. You know girls that call men boys. You have a father your mother lost interest in when you were born. He eventually left her for a younger woman that you have thought about while jerking off. He takes care of her and mom takes care of you. The fare seems fair. You do not understand girlfriends. You have friends who are girls and are sometimes sexual partners, but the idea of labeling yourself bound to another person seems, frankly, insane and you took a course in Erotic Mysticism in college. You've loved a girl before, a girl you would love as a woman so long as you were there for her and prayed she'd be there for you too. You've felt that way more than once or twice. It only makes sense when it really makes sense. "Yeah" you think, "erotic mysticism."
    As you and your friend walk back up the hill you think about writing an angry gender based poem instead of playing Modern Warfare and wish that you had in fact driven to the VP instead of walked.

I am mad.
I think you are dumb.
Most of the time I do not like to bring sex into the equation. but you are dumb because you are a woman.
I love you.
I love you in a way that no one has ever loved you.
You may have been fucked to the point of rapture, but it will not last.
It will not last the way my love will.
I will always love you, but I have given you enough chances.
I have given you more chances than you really deserve.
I have been here before.
I have been here with every woman,
every girl I have loved.
You don't know what it is and that is why you retreat from it.
Or maybe you do know and that is why you retreat from it.
I have done many things wrong,
but I have tried to do nothing wrong to you.
Yet knowing you has still hurt me.
What am I suppose to do with that?
Last night I sat on the stoop with a drunk girl who was telling me about my astrological sign.
She informed me on what a Cancer is because my birthday falls under Cancer.
She informed me, as she read from her smart phone, that because I was born on the day I was born, that I am also an Aquarius Rising. The adjectives she recited seemed eerily accurate to how I present myself in day to day life.
After that, she gave me a hand job.
I feel the need to prove something.

    You wrote that once about someone you love, but barely see, after drinking one and half bottles of malt liquor bought from the same VP you saw the young black man buy Parliament cigarettes. The Village Pantry on Ninth and Columbia. Someone you force into your mind for comfort in your raft riding reality down the deluge that is western civilization. You know why zombies are all the rage these days. You know you're mostly full of shit, but you wrote it anyways.

    "What do you do?" The old lady said on your first day at work. You play video games. You play Modern Warfare. You drink. You judge the people you call friends. You have no one you call brother.

    He does contract work, mostly demolition. When his boss says to tear this down he always smiles a little bit. Demolition allows him to use his body in a useful way. His muscles stretch and turn as he smashes, destroys, dismantles spaces built in a way that have never made sense to him whenever he sees it. Open space inevitably boxed in. The work becomes repetitive, but he always seems to rediscover its satisfaction, for now.
    His cousin was in a gang. The Gangster Disciples of Logansport. They believe they are on the south side of Chicago, but in reality they are in Logansport.
    He thinks about the Crips in Alaska sometimes and it always makes him laugh. "Alaskan gangs? They should call them tribes." He says when he and his friends drink enough or smoke enough marijuana. He and his friends,occasionally his brothers, always laugh when it is time to laugh.
    His cousin had his hand smashed with a sledge hammer by an opposing local Logansport gang. Locals Only they always say. It was a dispute over turf and minor drug deals. His cousin collects unemployment because of his crippled hand that resembles a dehydrated purple chicken wing. "For what?" he thought when he heard it happened. For Logansport? Everyone calls his cousin Baby Bird. His fuck up cousin, Baby Bird.
    He loves his son, baby Tyrone. He loves Tyrone's mother, Sheena. He loves his friends he calls brother from time to time. He loves the various girls he has sex with, but not like he loves Sheena, when real love really matters. And Tyrone, The beautiful black american baby boy, who cries a lot, but also sleeps a lot. Beautiful little baby.
     Sheena, beautiful black venus. Shiny brown hair and an ass that won't quit. Even after Tyrone that ass won't quit. He too, forgets sometimes.

    "'Sup guys?" he said and your friend fled and you just stared at him instead of greeting him back. The bored brown man behind the counter did not understand the connection you had with the young black man in the VP had because he is not from here. Where is he from? Why is he here? You can always choose Modern Warfare instead.

    Across the bridge a man sits outside the cafeteria where he works as a bus boy as he makes his way through college. He studies Communications and French Linguistics because he is from Ghana and everyone in Ghana speaks French. In Ghana, he realized he loves the language he knows. He learned eventually he could make a living from the knowledge he loves seeking out. He learned the knowledge of something he loves, the french language in a Ghanan dialect, could get him and his family out of Africa. He left Africa first, before the rest of his family, a trial run in order to see if he fits in this American reality.
     He smokes a cigarette to take his mind of of the uphill battle he endures day after day without much profit on his side, other than a dream of a better day to come for his two children, his wife, and for him. He looks up and sees the sun break through the clouds on a balmy summer afternoon at this midwestern university and smiles. Today will be a good day.
     From the sky, the sound of modern aerodynamics ripples through the air. The sound is felt on the ground and in the buildings. Cloudy blue sky is blighted by a gray whale of a plane, sagging in the air, agitating the air waves.  Students, visitors, and campus employees stop and look up as the quiet sky presents a drab anomaly floating barely above them.
     That plane is too big for our airport.
     That plane is too big for our airport.
     Standing in entropy.
     That plane is too big for our airport.
     The gray bomber circled round in the sky long enough to persuade most it was only a show.
     The gray bomber circled round in the sky long enough to persuade some they too could fly.
     Smoking his cigarette, his vice he knows he should quit, but simply cannot, not just yet, even though there are e-cigarettes, and he will quit anyway he can when his family, his children, his wife move here after 8 long years apart. His children have surpassed what is considered adulthood in most areas of Africa. He is nearly forty. He watches the sky and works and smokes and thinks about the ones he loves and wonders where they can be safe.

Aaron C. Molden

East Coast Collages, 2013

                                                             

                                                         Here is Something New.

                                                                     Thanks.

                                                               Aaron C. Molden

Filmmaker

    I.

    "Do you find this funny?" she asked as I turned my camera on.
    "It's my job." I said as I checked the aperture and framed her bust with the background. Rule of thirds.
    "Do you find your job funny?" she asked again.
    "Sometimes. Most of the time I find it fascinating. Sometimes I just go through the motions." I zoomed in on her face.
    "How do you find this job?" she asked as I panned out slowly with the lens.
    "Unhealthy." Her expression did not change with my answer.
    "It's suppose to be unhealthy. Our relationship is unhealthy." I panned to a woman sitting legs crossed to one side of a love seat. To frame the love seat or simply the woman herself. "If I confronted him and we talked this through it would mean this is a healthy situation."
    Stillness.
    "If it's so unhealthy why are you here?" She asked.
    Stillness, but the camera kept rolling. "I find my job fascinating. I am asked to dwell on something and truly get to know it, study it. That in and of itself sounds unhealthy to me, but I am able to do it and occasionally get paid. I love my work, unhealthy or not."
    Stillness, but the camera kept rolling. "Do you love me?" she asked.
    "Yes." I said. Her face went blank. No smile or frown. "Unhealthy fascinations." Zooming in on her face. She smiled again, slightly.
    "So tell me about your job." she said. I panned out to her bust.
    "Would you like me to give you the camera?" I asked.
    Stillness.
    "No. I like this." she finally said. "But will you tell me about your job?"
    "I learn things as I catalog them with this magical device. It let's me review them as often as I need to anytime I want."
    "Unhealthy fascinations." she said. I panned in on her beautiful smile. "I don't love you."
    "I know." I said.
    "Am I going to hurt you soon?" she asked.
    "Yep. I'm going to torment over you for a bit, drink heavily for awhile, and eventually discover something beautiful to point my camera at once again." I said. I shifted the tripod. The camera jerked to a side profile. Aperture. Rule of thirds.
    "I'm not even paying you." she laughed.
    "You don't have to." I said "You're giving me something many people cherish, even if they do not know why."
    "Well don't expect me to let you film us fucking." she said.
    "Maybe we should switch to water." Drinkers. How could you possibly trust them unless they are drunk all of the time.
    "Fine" she said. "Review this when you have to."
     Stillness. The camera kept rolling.
    "Do you really believe in love?" she asked.
    "What did he do?" I asked.
    "He's a professor." she said.
    "I know what he does, I know who he is, but what did he do?" I grabbed the camera off of the tripod and shifted to her feet as she leaned back on the love seat. She kicked off her shoes. "Why did you stop loving him?"
    "I didn't" she said.
    Slightly freckled face. Beautifully asymmetrical eyes. Mops of curly hair. Light hits in a way the camera reveals. "You want to use me" I said. I panned out to a modern reclined model.
    "And you can use me." she said. The light hit her toes, her feet, her legs, her hips, her stomach, her chest, her arms, her hands, her fingers, her neck and shoulder blades, her head and hair, and the couch she reclined on.
    "Why?" I asked with a streaming digital camera I could keep rolling so long as I did not push stop. She curled up into a ball within a square frame. I wished the sun had been setting.
     There was a time when we altered our environment.
     It now seems the environment alters us.
     "He's fucking his assistant." she said. I zoomed in on her face hidden by her tangled hair. It's beautiful. "You love me." she said.
     "You asked me earlier if I really believe in love." I said. "Most of the time it seems like people are desperately trying to find love anywhere they can imagine it." I took my eye away from the camera. "It's as if it is the only thing they have left. It seems pathetic to me since there is so much in this world to explore and understand besides love." I brought my eye back to the camera. "I'm always a little surprised when I do fall in love, and now you are giving me a chance to explore this the way I explore all things that fascinate me."
    "I'm not going to let you film us having sex." she said.
    "I don't want to film us having sex." I said "I'm not even 100% sure I'm going to have sex with you."
    "Oh yeah?" Her head rose from her fetal crouch.
    "Think of offering something that might explode on a person." I said
    "Are you talking about jizz?" she asked.
    "No" I said "but I see where you're coming from."
    "Jizz again." she said.
    "The camera is rolling." I said.
    "Well, what is your point?" she asked in frustration.
    "My point is for you to think about giving someone something that might explode." I said. "No matter what it is." I added. "Even if it is just an ejaculating dick."
     Stillness.
     She sat in the middle of the love seat with her head sunk towards her knees. Her hands vaulted strands of curly hair up against gravity to one of many subtle contours on her head and body. A modern model of grief and frustration. The camera rolled on.
     A modern model of rejection and denial. The camera rolled on.
    "He'll forgive you." she said.
    "I don't care about that" removing my eye from the camera
    "If he doesn't forgive you, he's not worth caring about." she said. "He won't forgive me."
    I hated her for a moment. This is my job. This is fascinating. This is unhealthy, but still fascinating. This is something that has happened, does happen, and will happen for a reason.
    "I want to go to bed." She said.
    "Let me take you to bed." I said.
    "Kiss me."
    "Okay."
    "It's not fair."
    "I know."
    I turned the camera off.

II.

    "I want to ask you more questions today." She said after breakfast and before I turned on my camera. I took a sip of coffee. Two eggs over easy with wheat toast. Hot sauce on the eggs and butter on the toast. Delicious. I grabbed an apple off the counter.
    "Do you mind if I finish breakfast with your apple?" I asked.
    "Please, I buy them as a guilt trip to persuade myself to eat them." She said staring into her coffee. "I want to ask you more questions today, when we're filming."
    "Really?" I asked.
    "Yes" she said. I took a sip of my coffee.
    "You don't like apples?" I asked.
    "It's the texture." She said. "The mush."
    "When was the last time you had an apple?"
    "I don't know." She said. "Look, I want to ask you questions today."
    I picked up the butter knife from the kitchen table and cut into the side of the apple. The blade broke the apples skin. Juice spurt on the blade as I slid the knife through the meat of the fruit. I took a bite of the apple slice. "Try this." I said. It's firm, crispy, juicy, a little crunchy and sweet." I held out the bit slice.
    "I'm going to ask you questions today." she said staring into my eyes.
    "Okay," I said. "But try this."
    "Not today."
 
    I turned on my camera after I finished my coffee.
     "Why are you here?"
    "To fulfill a job I was asked to do."
    "Why are you doing this job?"
    "Because I was asked to do it by someone I trust."
    "For money?"
    "I doubt it looking at my background."
    "For release?"
    "Release from what?"
    "I'm asking the questions." She said.
    Stillness. "Yes ma'am."
    Mimosas. Hair of the dog. A camera too. And stillness.
    "Do you love me?"
    "I answered already."
    "I don't love you."
    "I know."
    "I hate you right now."
    "I felt the same way about you last night." I said. "It passed."
    "So you say." She said.
    "What does that mean?" I asked.
    "I'm asking the questions."
    "What does that mean?" I asked again.
    "You'll remember. You'll remember when you found me, discovered me, the woman who made you change, for at least a little while, possibly forever." She said.
    "How many mimosas have you had?"
    "I'm asking the questions."
    "For a little while." I said. "Possibly forever, but a little while."
    "An exercise."
    I turned off my camera.

    "Why are you here?" She asked as I pressed my pale chest against her bare back.
    "Should I get my camera?" I asked as she wrapped her leg around mine. Sweat seeped through our pores as I buried my face into her curly hair. "If this is it, that is why I'm here." I said.
    "Fuck you, sweet talker."
    I kissed her face in so many ways. "Guilty." I said. "I won't forget you. I can't forget you."
    "I might forget you."
    "Ouch."
    "Sorry" she said.
    I turned my camera on. "May I film you in bed?" I asked.
    "You have to understand this is hard for me to do." She said. "Eventually I will get on with my life and this will probably not be something I want to think about as I get older."
    "You try and forget things?" I asked. "The camera is rolling." I reminded her. She looked over her shoulder into the lens with her lip curled upwards and one eye squinted.
    "You don't have memories you want to forget?"
    "I never imagined I could forget things." I said. "I forget things, more often than I wish to, but it's not something I try to do. My job is to figure out how to remember things. Trying to forget seems counter-intuitive to almost everything I do."
    "But you drink." She said with a blank face.
    I rocked the camera back and forth to signify nodding. I framed her figure under a bed sheet by a sun flooded window. "May I film you in bed?"
    "Aren't you already?"
    "What do you try and forget?"
    "No" she said. "I want to talk about you some more."
    "Would you like the camera?" I asked. She smiled.
    "Yes."
    Stillness. I turned off the camera.
    Stillness. I handed her the camera.
    "Do you know how to work this?" I asked.
    "Everyone has a camera." She said.
    "Okay." I said. "Would you like to go for a walk?"
    "Yes" she said. "But wait." She turned on the camera and pointed my lens at my soft pale shirtless bust. "I want you to see this." she said. I bowed my head and smiled. Average white American.

III.

    "When I asked if you try and forget things, I meant do you have memories you regret?" She asked with my camera pointed at me.
    "Of course" I said as we walked down a city sanctioned path parallel to the river which divides it. "Having only good memories is a lie."
    "But why dwell on them?" she asked. She jerked the camera when her skirt snagged a branch.
    "I don't dwell on them." I said as I stepped over a root jutting from the dirt. She chose the proper footwear for the occasion. A pretty girl in a dress with hiking shoes and a camera. A modern model. A guy in used clothes and deteriorating hiking shoes with his hands in his pockets. Visions of Urban Outfitters in nature. Cameras. "But I know they are important. Those regretted memories are there for me to learn from." I said. "even if I do forget about them much of the time."
    "We have different coping mechanisms, you and I." She said. I looked into the lens. I stopped walking. She stopped walking.
    "Not that different when you get down to it." I said.
    "You're pretty good at this." she said.
    "Have you checked your light?" I asked.
    "I can see you." she said.
    "But how is the light?"
    "Natural."
    "You can change nature pretty easily with light and shadows" I said. "If you have an eye for it."
    We continued walking. "May I take the camera?" I asked.
    "Did I do something wrong?" she asked.
    "No, I simply want to film our surroundings." Six steps without a voice. "My surroundings." Six steps without a voice. "Your surroundings." Six steps without a voice. "B roll?" I requested.
    "Words are not important know." She said. She stopped. I stopped. She handed me the camera still rolling. Upon review it blurred the landscape into a smeared spiral of color and shadow.
    She walked ahead of me in the green leaves and growing trees. She walked ahead on leaves, humus and dirt. She walked ahead with rays of light beaming through dark wood towers that collapse from time to time when the weather becomes too punishing. She walked ahead on a beaten path matted by footprints. She hopped over a set of paw prints which dug into the path. An animal had made a mark. She smiled as she looked back at the camera, at me. She waved her hands in the air while she walked. She spun around practicing a dance move on the narrow path. The camera jerked as mt foot caught a root. She smiled. She almost laughed. "Are you going to edit that out?" She asked.
    "We'll see how it looks on review." I responded.
    "This feels like a cliche." She said.
    "It is a cliche. Let's enjoy it while it lasts." I set the camera down. We stood thirty feet from each other staring into each other's eyes. I sprung at a dash towards her. She let out a short high squeak as she bounced into motion. She ran and I chased her letting out hoos and hahs when irregular breathing seemed necessary. She turned off the beaten path. Crouched, she grabbed honeysuckle branches, using her arms to navigate with her feet. She swung and darted through the web of flora, the jungle gym next to the river. I followed her, grinning. She looked back, occasionally, grinning. We reached a clearing next to the river with knee high grass. I gained on her. I wrapped my arms around her and spun her in the air. I dropped my knees to the sandy ground and laid her upon my chest. We both exhaled. The grassed tickled my skin. It felt itchy.
    "I feel itchy" she said.
    "Yep." I laid wide eyed.
    Stillness. "We should get the camera."
    "Yep." I said. "Or we could stay here forever."
    "Get real."
    Stillness.
    "We should get the camera." She said.

IV.

    "Film it again." she said.
    "What?"
    "Film it again" she said. "With your camera."
    "It's all recorded" I said. "It kept rolling."
    "It didn't follow us."
    "What?"
    "The camera didn't follow us." she said.
    "I can't follow you with the camera. Too many twists and turns."
    "You can't follow the twists and turns with your camera?" She asked.
    "I would have to mount it to something so I can use my hands." I said.
    "You don't have something to mount your camera?" She asked.
    "I have a tripod, but it's to keep the camera level." I said. "I film a lot of conversations."
    "Sounds boring." she said.
     "Have you found our conversations boring?" I asked.
     Stillness. She looked up with her eyes squinted, the front of her tongue barely exposed between her lips. "Do you think it's worth getting a moving mount?" She asked.
     "I can set the camera up in the field on the tripod, have it rolling as we made our way towards it."
     "I kind of want the middle part too."
     I zoomed in on her face. "It's going to cost money." I said. "We can buy a body mount or we can hire another cameraman to follow us." I framed only her face, her forehead, her eyes, her nose, her mouth, her chin. Sunlight cast a shadow on the contours of her face.
     "Let's try it your way." She said.

Take one.
    The top of the screen was young midwestern foliage. The bottom of the screen was grassy wetlands. Two atoms grew larger as they approached the camera. A woman first, a man second. They remained parallel between the trees and wetland. They eventually dipped down into the wetland.

Take two.
    The top third of the screen was blue and white sky. The middle was young green and brown midwestern foliage. The bottom was grassy wetlands. Two atoms grew larger as they approached the camera. A woman first, a man second. They remained parallel between the foliage and wetland. They eventually dipped down into the wetland.

Take three.
     A sliver of blue sky. A small band of young foliage. Two thirds of the bottom of the screen were wetlands. Two atoms grew larger as they slowly sank to the bottom left corner of the screen.

Take four.
    Two thirds the blue sky and cumulus clouds. One third young twisting brown roots and scattered green leaves. Two atoms bounced occasionally above the bottom of the screen. Eventually only a breeze.

Take five.
    The sun set alone, the bottom of the screen the horizon. Two atoms under sight.

Take six.
    The camera framed her head, her hair, her neck, her chest, her back matting the wetland grass. It's beautiful. I rested my head on her breast filming her. A millipede scuttled along her thigh to mine. She didn't notice or didn't care. I rolled back in a semicircle, blurring the screen. I grounded myself and framed her again with her hair in her face and her shirt strap sagging below her shoulder. Wetland grass dangled in front of her lips. She bit the grass. "We need to film the middle part." she said.
    "Okay" I said. "How?"
    "We hire someone to film us." She said. "Someone we trust."

V.

How beautiful was she?
How beautiful is she?
How beautiful?

I know him.
I know what he does.
I know what he is.
I think. Think. Think. Think.
I think harder because I have to, right?

"Why are you doing this?" I asked.
"I answered already" she said. "Who did you hire?"
"Your father." He walked in with a camera.
"I hired your mother." She walked in with a camera
"Do they know how to work those things?"
"Everyone" father with camera said.
"has" mother with camera said.
"a camera" she said.
Her husband walked into the dark room. "Even if it is not digital" he said or wrote.

After the nightmare, we laid in bed both awake and still. The camera may have been rolling the whole time. I'll check youtube occasionally.

    "Say the most disgusting thing you can think to say." she said, breaking the silence in our bed. I rolled over to parallel her body. I put my lips to her small ear.
    "Support the military-industrial complex." I kissed her lobe. "And keep buying shit you don't need."
    "Do it again." she said.
    "Let children die in poorly constructed factories" I said "so you can look stylish for cheap."
    "Do it again." she said as she pushed her back and buttocks against me.
    "Brainwash your homosexual child into believing." I said wrapping my leg around hers. "They are wrong, even if they can't understand why."
    "Faggot" she said.
    "Caught me" I said. "I'm a faggot." I said as I thrust my hips.

    We laid in bed in the morning sunlight, my arm around her waist. "Say the most disgusting thing you can think to say." she said.
    "Consume" I said "without thinking."
    "You drink."
    "Don't think I haven't thought about it." I said.
    "I don't love you." she said.
    I sighed. "What do you love?" I asked.
    "What do you love?" she asked.
    "Truth." I said. "The older I get the rarer it seems, which for some reason makes me want to root for it all the more."
    "You drink."
    "I can pick up a bottle or I can pick up a camera or I can pick up both while I consume because I must consume something to be able to continue to pick up a bottle or camera or both." I said as I rolled away from her.
    "Unhealthy fascinations." she said.
    "Natural fascinations." I said.
    "You're a strange wild animal."
    "Aren't we all."
    "You have a funny way of talking dirty." she said.
    "This isn't dirty to me" I said. "I would only use flowery language to describe this. I would woefully attempt to write poetry."
    "You are a faggot."
    "Just so you know, some parts of your personality seem rooted in midwest America in the most delusional way I could imagine."
    Stillness.
    "I can have this anytime I want." she said.
    "Maybe I would write a song instead."

    "Insider" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Tom Petty was once described as an important poet and figure of Americana music. His music has been a part of my life since before I could choose what I did and did not hear.

    "I can have this anytime I want," she said. "from anyone I want." she added.
    "Not anyone" I said. "Some, but not any."
    "I don't love you."
    "I know."
    "We have work to do."
    "I thought this was work. Unhealthy work."
    "Please take your head out of your ass." she said. "It's natural, but not work."
    "We have different coping mechanisms, you and I." I said.
    She grabbed my inner thigh. I jerked and the camera slipped from my hand. I forgot I was filming. My mind was elsewhere when my hand picked up the camera. "Not that different when you get down to it."
    "I want to make a film." She said. "and I want your camera, if nothing else, to make this film."
    "What will you do with it?" I asked. I framed her face, then her body, then her body within a background.
    "We'll decide later."
    "I have other work I must do." I said struggling to keep her in focus. "For a living."
    "No room for a passion project?" She asked.
    "I'm full to the brim with passion projects." I said. "This is your passion project." I finally focused in on her. Stillness.
    "I can't pay you, but I can pay for us." She said. "I can take care of us." She said. "I can take care of you while we make this movie."
    "What happens when it is over?" I asked.
    "We sell the movie." She said.
    "Do you own a dog?" I asked.
    "What."
    "Do you own a dog?" I asked again.
    "What are you talking about?"
    "Do you have a pet?" I asked.
    "Yeah, I have a cat." She said. "Do you have a dog?"
    "No, but I empathize with them." I said.
    "Why did you ask if a had dog?"

    Be Your Own Pet. A band I saw during Lollapalooza at Millenium Park in Chicago, Illinois. Underage bodies shaking and jerking and sweating in summer clothes holding microphones and electric instruments. Making joyous racket. I wondered what they were doing at the time.

    She kissed me on the cheek. "Where were you?" she asked. I had slumped the camera on my chest.
    "In my head" I said with the camera still slumped. She pulled the camera up and stared into the lens. "I want your camera even if I can't trust anything else."
    "Fuck you, sweet talker."
    "I write screenplays as well." I said.
    "Full to the brim with passion projects." She quoted me. "I will take care of you for a while."
    "And when it is done?"
    "Jesus, man, do what I do, improvise."

VI.

-What is your name?
-You know my name.
-Those seeing this do not know your name.
-Move on.
-What is his name?
-You said you know his name.
-You have made it clear this is not about me.
-What is your name?
-Everything is obvious, but if you want to play games I will happily play games.
-Asshole.
-Bitch.
Stillness.
-You're a bitch.
-Games.
-You're a faggot.
-Games.
-You wish you were black.
-Actually, I don't.
-You want an excuse to be defiant.
-No I don't. I wish I didn't have a something to be defiant against, but I can't forget certain things.
-White, heterosexual, privileged, over educated, midwestern guilt.
-Aaron is also a person.
-Will you help me make this movie?
-Will you take my advice with my minimal, yet useful experience, bitch?
-Asshole.
-That doesn't hurt very much, does it.
-Asshole.
-Exactly
-I don't love you.
-I hope you learn to love something which loves you back, eventually.
-Asshole.
-We're both still here despite such shocking dialogue.
-Cunt.
-Taint scraper.
-Sucky fucker.
-Fucky sucker
-Waddling sack shitter of yore.
-That's the spirit.
-Fuck you, fuck him, fuck the guy before him, whatever his name is, fucking sharp chinned, long necked, skinny boned, tight t-shirt wearing fuck.
-That's the spirit.
-Fuck men, fuck man, fuck my dad and fuck my mom while we're at it. Fuck everything I foolishly viewed on the bright side. Fuck this fucking bullshit, I'm tired.
-Fuck it.
-I'm tired.
-Me too.
-I want to make this movie. I want your camera.
-Fuck it.
She smiled.
Such a dark background.
I turned off the camera, took a piss, and joined her in bed.

VII.

    "I want you to listen to me, but I don't want to look at you." she said.
    "Look away from the camera." I suggested.
    "I want you in the shot, listening." she said.
    "I can set up the tripod." I reminded her.
    "Your camera filming while I tell you something, and the camera sees it, overhears it."
    "The camera as voyeur." I said. I turned on the camera. A man sitting in the foreground, facing away from the camera in shadows. A woman in profile, sitting reclined in the middle ground, well it.  Behind her a window exposing a patch of moving sky in an otherwise still background. Interiors.

    He's a professor. He grew up in Kansas on a farm. Growing up, his family's farm was fruitful and college seemed a good investment for the extra income. Responsible parents invest in their children when they can. Growing up he spent a lot of time alone, working on projects, cultivating rare plants from the area, singing to himself songs he made up in his head. He's the youngest of three siblings. He rode his bike a lot over the rolling Kansas hills. He thinks it looks like a desert now, not as beautiful as it once was. When I first saw it, it seemed beautiful, but too dry. That's something I think he's right about, his childhood was too dry.
    He discovered college gave him the materials to do the things he had done since before he could remember, experiment. He took at least twenty credit hours a semester, excelling and failing in various subjects which either brought him joy or frustration. He ended up with three degrees: Botany, Physics, and Political Science. He has a minor in music as well.
    He plays cello. He used to be a part of a quartet, but he says he doesn't have time for that now. Music brings him joy like only one other thing I have seen. I saw it when he use to make love to me. He forgot how to love me eventually. He'll never stop playing cello.
   Eventually the University hired him.
   I was a student there in design and communications. I was required to take a Political Science course he taught. Something clicked. I visited his office hours, asked him questions about his course. I bugged him, I could tell. I knew what I was talking about. I studied his assignments and cracked his academic code. I made him trust me, as I strangely trusted him. He learned to love it, love me, for a while.
    He works very hard. He has an assistant who helps him with every little project or grand scheme he can imagine. Explore with me he silently screams with how he presents himself.

    I leaned over and put my hand to my cheek. "He's fucking his assistant" she said looking into the camera instead of the dark shadow in front of her.
   "How do you know?" The dark figure asked.
   "Because they're perfect for each other." she said to the camera.
   "She is rapt by him, his passion, his drive, his ambition." she said. "She would follow him to the ends of this Earth and she is beautiful. She's a beautiful radiant creature." she rubbed her eyes with her hands. "He needs someone who knows what to do with his drive, his passion. He once believed he had it with me." she laid back and placed her left arm behind her head. "But he didn't. He must know everything to be happy. I just want to be happy."
    I looked at the camera behind me.
    "She loves him more than I do, so I must harden up or have my heart broken."
    "Why will your heart be broken?" I asked.
    "Because he's better than me. He's better than us. Here we are trying desperately to create some semblance of human nature, while he and the woman he truly loves work to make this world better somehow." she said looking down at her lap. "It hurts. It hurts because I want to be good enough for him, but he knows I will never be. The only thing I can do is either give up or go out with a fight."
    The Battery died. She wanted to stop for the night and go home to her husband. She never came back. She left her husband and this town a couple weeks later. She left this footage with me and I don't know what to do with it.

    The middle part originally filmed was me setting the camera down. From the ground the camera caught my foot. A small figure stood next to my crumbling monolith of a shoe thanks to perspective. Blurry globes of green and brown radiated gradients of colored light around the small bright figure. My foot blocked the colored light. My foot shifted, letting rays of colored light beam past my shadowed ankle, uprooted from the dirt as we both moved towards our wooded point omega. Frenetic breaks in the light fluttered on the screen as my feet, legs, waist, back, shoulders, head, arms, body, self grew smaller on the screen running towards the small bright figure dwindling towards the horizon in the glowing light. Two beings disappear into the woods.

Aaron C. Molden