Per his request, I excitedly elaborated that one of the two letter-writers in the book was a historian named Luke, the same Luke who authored two manuscripts found in the New Testament. I explained that his letter exchange was between him and a wealthy benefactor to the Roman Empire, Antipas.

I shared how Antipas intelligently challenged Luke about the validity of the seemingly subversive claims of the man named Jesus, but instead of responding with a plethora of propositional arguments, Luke rather encouraged that Antipas do no more than take part in the house-gatherings of these who followed Him with their entire existence-corporate. The only true apologetic for whether or not the claims of a Leader are true is the extent to which his followers carry them out in praxis. [Come and see].

Even in the face of heavy persecution – I went on – this people-group remained faithful to their Leader by embodying his life and actions, and by doing so they made the same bold and unique proclamation with their radical, communal behavior. As Antipas’ interacted with Luke, his manuscripts, and these people who were dangerously committed to this New Way of Life, Antipas became increasingly convinced that this must be The True way to Live. Soon enough, Antipas had converted his allegiance from Caesar to the True Emperor, and was eventually martyred for it.

+

Now sure I’d overwhelmed him, Steve surprised me when he said, “I want to read that book.” Apparently, Clear over Cute is Steve’s angle.

He said he has an invested interest in anything sociological, and I acknowleded, then, that this book would likely be a good fit for him, especially since it depicts a group of people who radically restructured their lives in deep contrast to the larger culture. I said I’d found it most interesting the way their behavior was clearly governed by a Realm Other than Rome, and, that after a good deal of searching myself, I’d realized [with Help] that I have an less-increasing desire for loyalty to anything else myself.

I told him I did not think this First-Century communal ethos was unique to the first century, but rather that it was possible to embody in the twenty-first century as well. Together we could do a great Work to heal the sick, feed the hungry, provide shelter to the weak, to exchange present evil for future Good, and to make all things New. I explained these are the purposes for which the leader of these people walked the earth, and that just as he, the Son, was sent by the Father to make things Right again, he now has enabled and sent all people to continue this purpose.

+

Steve gave his number even though we both knew our phones would be inoperable inside the house. Knowing this gesture is a valuable relational step among Twenty-First Western culture, I was honored that he would extend it.

He said he would like to get a ale sometime to exchange books that have been important to us. Another collection of Letters immediately came to mind, but I vowed to wait before I said anything more.

Shrood the Shoulds! and Musts! with Coulds
then/if [conditional] creatures crawl through
the [tick-tock] tangly web of the nihilo+ἀρχήness monster.
Studies show, studies, show studies, show
Cups of caffeine [and other sorts of fiendish -eines]
slows down Time. [or the personperception of it]
{but conciousness is what is any way worth of the while
waiting} room, stalling room, haystalls stacked
of people squeezing into Emptiness by filling
freeway cars with shaking fists and screaming
“shit!” when the guy in the tractor swings
his five-mile-an-hour-turn without a blinker.

Maybe that is the criteria of the title; not that the product is something eloquent or polished or rhetorically convincing – but that the very act is essential to one’s daily existence.¹

•

After over two-month’s time at Vickery, I’ve finally come around to putting things on the walls and situated some rugs about the floor. Increasingly in the months to come, this place will serve as both Home and Office, and since I will be spending a good amount of my time here, I wanted to be certain my surroundings occupied an aesthetic groove more agreeable than were the blankwhitewalls before.

•

Last night, I bought some irresistible whole wheat bread from the 24-hour gas station by Mockingbird Station. I photographed a wedding yesterday, and typically after such marathons I am bent towards a soft, chewy peanut butter sandwich. Since grocery stores have no concept of the time 1:38AM [and because I was simply unable to control my insatiable desire for the bread], I went to the biggest gas station in my area with hopes they would carry some of the grainy goodness, and in fact they did!

When I got home, I made not one, but three sandwiches [over time, will you] before bed, which is not among the healthiest choices I have ever made.² My judgment is substantially impaired after a wedding day, though, so I leave myself a good amount of slack.

•

When I lived in New York, I thrived on the letters a good friend and I wrote back and forth to one another. Some of my [self-induced] loneliest episodes took place in that bedroom in Spanish Harlem, and often the thing that kept me from spiraling into some stupid culture-shocked-self-victimization was the little brown envelope which periodically appeared over the Entourage icon in my dock. “New Mail!” – I thought – meant that I meant.

That which does not destroy us makes us stronger;
We must pass through the destruction to be Made.³

As I have lately begun to re-read the particular form these letters assumed between the two of us, I wanted to make sure in future letters that I maintained the unique ethos of our so-far correspondence. Reading our antiquated exchange has made me realize – among other things – how I once failed to capitalize any one word that needed it. I can remember one definite time during last summer when I decided I was going to begin capitalizing the things in my writing that asked for it. Though it was a whimsical decision, I thought that it would also be a healthy thing to get together. That is only one small example of how we change, and the sorts of steps we take to get there.

No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.⁴

Unfortunately, when Texas took away the apostlesnyc.com domain from my email address, she took with it the majority of our year-long electronic correspondence. I do think this friend is in much the same boat [an ironic adage considering his current Place] as I was there, in terms of separation from friends, family [and cultural familiarity], though I am sure on a much deeper and intense level. I can not imagine what us writing back and forth must mean for him, considering how much it means for me, a child safe in the city where he grew [grows] up.

“You are a dad,” I told him, with nothing better to say.

A few days ago, while I was relentlessly editing photos [a task from which I usually look for some sort of break that involves talking to people], he explained to me over iChat about how emotional the past few days have been for him.

“It’s the most amazing thing.”

He must have noticed from my %iTunes status that I was listening to the new Sigur Rós album, since he asked me what I thought of it. I told him how thoroughly I’d been enjoying it – that it’d been on repeat for the last few days without ceasing since I’d a hard time getting over how intimate and uncharacteristically raw it is. He responded to say he’s been listening the same in the days since his son was born.

+

As I began to imagine what sort of meaning Jónsi’s Hopelandic must embody for him in these moments, I could think of no other sound [at least in form] that point toward the miraculous reality of birth, and the Second Birth for which it yearns. If Incarnation sounds like anything, surely Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust is not far from it.⁴

On our way, we stopped in front of this wall.

I remember.

I began to tell him that from what I can tell so far, the book is a fictional exchange of letters between residents of the First Century Mediterranean region.

Hoping I could manage my excitement over the topic matter, I explained that basically, Letters provide a detailed account of first-century culture, and a particularly peculiar group of people within it. These people, I explained, had begun treating one another like a close-knit family, to the point of calling one another “Brother” and “Sister” to express it. They shared everything they owned for the Good the Whole, provided food for the hungry, raiment for the naked, and home for the orphan.

I went on to explain that these people shared a unique Purpose which led them to do so, that it had been handed over by One who’d gone before embodying and proclaiming it. By it they remained committed to the reconciliation they had already begun to experience, seeking to create community in their homes by offering an Open Door and sharing meals with whomever would want to share.

It became quickly apparent that these people lived as if a new Way of life had been inaugurated, and they held on to it with desperation. They had quickly begun to redefine First Century life to the extent that they subverted social codes, and since they lived in the expectancy that History was soon coming to its End, their behavior made them appear radically different than the majority of the Roman Empire.

The crux of the letter exchange is the story of this New People, between the two letter writers – one which already belonged to the group and one which was outside the group. I told Steve that at the beginning of the book, both letter writers wrote from particularly different perspectives, but by the end of the book – I explained excitedly – the worldview of one to the other was not discernibly different!

I would have liked to explained the “how” to that final statement a bit more, but I thought to end it there in an effort to avoid overwhelming the guy.

Internally, I gathered my final comments. And again, he inquired a little further.

the universality of them
is no-thing too tangible.
So the women turned fronts
to me and asked as if I am
an archetype, “Andrew,
then what is your biggest fear?”

I tried to swallow down
the Thing
I knew my answer
must contain, but instead
it came crawling out like a
hairy Tarantula, gagging me with
its squirmy little legs.

“To Know
I Am
Understood,”
[of course the fear
would need a not after the I Am]
was the what I’d never vocalized
loudly like this, thinking
the saying would lead away
from a solution to the Thing.

So came a second-level re-
daction of a less abstract “To be
perceived correctly,” which
actually means that of Great
value to me is a congruency
of the Theirs to the Mine.

Then we could
each nod-agree, since
sitting on a porch, the sun
setting said we were fifty [million] miles
from somewhere we had
to Be.

+

While preparing to break fast, I innocently reached up for a packet of sweetener into the cabinet specifically assigned to all-things-coffee. Instead of hoisting out a singular paper pouch of sweet, the entire mug in which they are kept came crashing down to the counter below, shattering and shooting tiny ceramic pieces all about my kitchen.

Before I could even panic, three of the packets fell onto one of the stove’s burners, which had warmed to HIGH for the preparation of a French Omelette.

Instantaneously my stove burst into flames, followed immediately by a smell something like a dead animal’s. Reflexively, I poured a pot of cold water on the stove. The fire was resilient. Knowing nothing else to do, I decided to just wait it out until the fire had run its course [a liberal helping of hope in-tow].

When the fire eventually did settle [again, Praise be], I picked up where I left off before the accident. After cracking two eggs in the pan, I was glad to discover my homebrew Estima was unaffected by the incident, so I poured it carefully into a mug.

Picking up one of the Splenda packets from the ground in an effort to curve the coffee’s acidity, I looked around at the pieces of ceramic strewn about and grew very tempted to sweep them up Sunday and just tiptoe around til then. And to further delay my decision on what I would do about the wreckage in the kitchen, I sat down to write this.

As it turns out, Steve is a lawyer-in-training, and of this title he quickly made clear: “It’s not as cool as it sounds.”

We carried on a little bit about general topics common to us [namely: the house we share], and I briefly explained some of my concerns as a new resident to Vickery. With an undertone of disappointment he too acknowledged the way the others do pretty well to keep to themselves. We nodded together.

Continuing on in that vein, he asked if I knew anything about the new silver Honda that had been parked near the dumpster for the last month. I explained that was the car of the new girl, Marissa. He said that he, like me, knows little of most of our neighbors apart from the cars they drive, or, the way they appear and disappear mysteriously in no particular pattern. We nodded together.

I thought the conversation was nearing its end, and I was content with the ease at which it flowed.

“It was really, really good talking with you,” I said, signaling my departure.

“I like reading,” Steve said, abruptly. “What’s that book in your hand?”

I looked down and read the title through my fingertips, having forgotten what I was holding.

“The Lost Letters of Pergamum,” I said quickly, aware that such an eccentric title would need some explanation.

+

Returning home from Rockwall by Interstate 30, I exited Munger, which is a task notable only because it was my first time to do so in the morning [and even the simplest Neverbefores bring me a degree of excitement].  After I exited, I passed through a light, took a curve around through a second, passed under a third, and came upon Live Oak Street, which, as I tend to think of it, marks the center of Dallas’ antiquity.

At this intersection – which has apparently seen very few upgrades over the past century – a petite Puerto Rican man in his latter years sat on a sea-foam green Schwinn, waiting for WALK to light up at the opposite end of the Zebra crossing. When some morninglight sprayed through the oaks to break up the shadows, I could see his skin was a leathery chocolate, and a Florida Marlins cap rested casually atop his head.

I can not say why, but ever since this moment two hours ago, I haven’t been able to get Will Smith’s Miami out of my head.

The first significant thing I did
with this pre-Dawn-part-of-the-day
was to wait out the four long minutes leading
up to 5:55AM, simply so I could say that at
that time, I had done so
without any purpose
other than doing so to do so.

Wikipedia has as its technical description of the stuff a “protein matrix lined with mineral crystals,” which is so cool that I can never feel uneasy about eating the crunchy things again.

My first attempt at repairing that fault that was to try and finish a book I’ve been at sporadically since May. My plan was clear: I would walk to the Dubliner, a place which boasts a charming atmosphere something similar to the Fáilte I felt during the Upper East days. On my way out of the house, I decided to phone my good friend April to catch up. She had been traveling and, well, I had been working too much.

Since I don’t get a signal inside my apartment and I was not prepared to try to talk while at the Dubliner [where I would have to compete with the Murphy’s-drenched laughter of a few good Irishmen], I chose Vickery’s parking lot as the location for the conversation.

+

Although loyally concentrated on April’s remarks on New Orleans’ grandeur, I couldn’t help but notice about halfway through our conversation when a guy my age, wearing emerald swim trunks, descended the steps from the back door. He started some waving gesture with one hand, and in it I could see a small, black electronic device.

Turning towards him, I made eye contact and offered the traditional “what’s up, bro” nod – the kind where you tip your chin up while keeping your face relaxed and evercool. As he continued to repeat his homebrew sign language, I finally realized he was motioning in the direction of our house. From all of this, I decided upon a rough translation of his movements; something along the lines of, “You don’t get service inside Vickery, either?”

With my face I signaled a theatrical “NO!” in an attempt to express exactly how victimizing this consistent disadvantage has been.

As he began dialing on his phone, my conversation with April had come to a close.

I hung around the parking lot until his conversation ended.

… .. … .. … .. … .. … .. …

I was asked to do two weddings this weekend,
[of which the first was filled with wonder, cause
it couldn’t have been Espresso] alone. At Midnight
on the way home, it was easily obvious that
some thing was abrew – playing freeway Chess
with the looney-pawn storm-chaser vans.

I got home, little Red Bulls still swimming
in my bloodstream, and transferred the 1,002
photos to the hard drive from my memory
cards. 1:45 am, and I was to arise four later
for the next installment, one of the Reform
Jew type. Morning said, “Awake O Sleeper,
surround with flesh Truth, your birthing capacity.”

[No one told that the Bride asked all to wear
white with the walls, Iconoclasted; my ignorance
dressed me in a hearkening black]. They signed
the Ketubah in the foyer; the Rabbi had a streak
of Wild in her hair. I quietly spread across the frame
cowhide-bleached Kipas, all worn proudly until
in their Porsches on the speedway to Salum,
[Abraham] to pass the Shalom. “Mazal Tov!”
in 1,042 frames of white wine, jazz, and pearls.

When the day reached its end, a fragile old
woman told me the man who’d unceasingly
given me unwanted photography advice
was not just the token protective grandpa. No–
he’d won the Pulitzer Prize in the 40’s for war
photojournalism! I nearly threw up for thinking
such negative things about his naggityness:

“You shooting at 1/1000 kid?” He went on.
“And I don’t mean at f8!” Not that he could hear
my answer, made deaf from the Aircraft Carriers.

[Plus, I was cheating at f1.4.]

This last question resurrected my Daddo; I stood
in Victoria’s model airplane shop, tall as his
arthritic knee, tugging his shorts for balsa. Smells
of a turkey stuffed waft in from Eva’s kitchen.

About a month ago, a girl named Marissa moved in to Vickery. The thudding began the day of her arrival and from that point forward it hadn’t stopped, so I couldn’t help but associate this new noise with her new presence. Only a few days prior, I had told my good friend Medea that the thing to be known with any certainty about this-Marissa is how keen she is on jumping jacks. I had simply no other explanation.

While clanging around at 6:15 am on a Saturday morning might seem disruptive, I am typically thankful if something wakes me earlier than I’d planned. So many beautiful things happen during morning sleep keeps from sight. Anyway, I had by this point grown somewhat accustomed to the mysterious rhythm, dismissing it as just another constituent of the audio-mass that is life-at-city’s-center.

My mind circulated visions of a Nariño El Tambo French Press, and in an effort to satisfy the developing craving, I set out on the fastest route to my kitchen, which leads through the bathroom. As I entered the living room, though, I heard a different–yet equally volatile–beating than the one that took me from sleep moments ago. These two beating noises clashed in meter, and the force of their argument was intimidating.

Following my ears, I looked up to the ceiling at the place my fan had begun to spin furiously from its axis. Its screws had somehow loosened overnight, and I was sure that very soon it would crash to the cedar below.

Dodging back into my bedroom, I dug for my phone beneath an infantry of bookbags and camera gear. I half-knew I’d tossed it somewhere among this very heap the night before, when I had finally made the groggy retreat to bed. Eventually locating it near the bottom, I phoned Landlord Bob.

+

Bob appeared at Vickery a short time after, thick with an angst that channeled to his jittery fingers. He had come with the purpose to rescue my dangling ceiling fan from its death, but as soon as he heard [what I assumed to be Marissa’s] pounding from the floor above, he dismissed my issue as low-priority and angrily stomped out the door and down the hall. Bob is a veteran, so I placed my trust in his discernment.

His heavy steps added yet another rhythm incongruent to the other two, and in the clashing time signatures, I shrugged my metaphysical shoulders.

Not too long after he left on his hunt, the original sound halted abruptly.

My ceiling fan still threatened.

In his absence, I stood silently some distance from the location of the fan’s imminent fall. I kept a severe, steady eye on the desperate thing, hoping that by some miracle securing my concentration on the object would prevent its fateful crash.

He returned excitedly with a report that the sound was in fact not from my upstairs neighbor. Instead, it was my next-door-neighbor responsible for the noise, and, as Bob’s report had it, the guy had secured a gym mat and a punching bag to the wall shared with my dining room. He had converted his living room into a kickboxing arena, and apparently, disciplined kickboxers wake up pretty early.

In that moment it was quickly clear why this guy [whom I’ve yet to meet] had chosen to live in solitude; any roommate who’d offer approval for that sort of behavior must be rare.

[I can’t comment on the reasons why the thudding seemed to come from the apartment above, but I can say that Bob’s discovery {that it wasn’t} has afforded me a newfound respect for Marissa. The only downside to that is that I now know just as much about her as I did before she moved in.]

+

It’s quite odd to live alone. And especially peculiar here–where it has begun to appear like all my neighbors have chosen Vickery only to compound their reclusion and maintain the control privacy offers. I am probably selling them short, but when I moved in two months ago I carried with me some excitement at the prospect of at least meeting the others. Of the eight units in my tiny building, I have yet to even catch glimpse of three of the inhabitants. Considering we all share a relatively small house, that is a good percentage of the whole.

The only thing I know with any certainty about these humans is the curious way in which their vehicles appear and disappear like thieves in the night. Otherwise, I can infer a thing or two when I hear the back door slam shut, or if I see letters in the “Outgoing” slot in the mail room. Then again, if I’m not seeing these people, then they aren’t seeing me either [that’s 18-wheeler insight for you]. Perhaps they are–at this very moment–at desks in their apartments penning this very same entry in their journals.

It is probably naïve of me to assume I could so easily widen my role from neighbor to something more intimate in such a short time, but I would rather act hopefully than with a too-careful reservation. Even so, I had raised my expectations a bit higher than the Real has [so far] had it, and that is an inclination I’ve always had to battle.

I’ve spent the last twenty-three years of my life with a roommate of some sort, but I can hardly help from wondering if the opposite is true of the other tenants of Vickery. It’s growing increasingly clear that my neighbors have so fine-tuned their hermitude that even in the most public of Place they manage to stealthily cloak from plain sight. Even so I know myself to move slowly into relationships, so perhaps it’s no big mistake we’re all in this together.

+

After Bob successfully hoisted the damaged fan from the ceiling and exited my apartment, I realized that he was the first person in two days with whom I’d talked face-to-face [well, one unconcerned with deadlines and Photoshop, at least]. I keep that up, I thought, the next thing I know my living room will have been converted into The Octagon.

twenty
seconds later–
9:03 am, when
I wanted to seem prompt.

in a barracks deciding that geometry’s
most suitable to Say? Maybe They is the
collective consciousness of the cosmos–
Some surly, scruffy

poet swallowed by the onus of ascertaining
its worth and its depth, then forth to caulk
mystery in seams of syntax and meter, with
out suffocating the Truth. By a candle

Light in a cave, a hieroglyphic sketched by
some primitive being, knowing vaguely
the concept of years adding numbers
as they pass. The twenty-fourth summer

Comes to Descartes’ calculated scribble
to learn how Truly Human he will be
in the future, bewildering amounts of
redactions on Reason required to read it.

So still, who are the They-sayers, offering
birth-dates a peak on a line, not least Real-
izing that ascending towards Next is
descending from Last? So, I’m not married

to it, nor do I know whether I’ll never be.
The They is the orange tulip I’m holding
loosely in my left hand, while it becomes
with the Right one as a We. Waiting

I can has a bird?

Dropped in some goodies in the sidebar, too.

Dawn finds a cleft and whispers
A gentle meniscus, floating Past
my ear, and in the sense We know
the majesty of snowdrops in June.

Outside, drills and hammers make awry
shuttle-flumes, splitting a mountain
into valleys where the echo is confused
for its Prime Mover. I roll from the box

Spring. My Child statant before me.
“Weep not for the change that borrows
Fear from the white-ridged hills we
can not see,” Yellow through The Brown

To Green-

Café Brazil is something to see, else
through matinal aperture: bracken
in a honeydew spray-fuse, swarm of
lightning bugs must collect to charge.

“Diet Coke all you’ll have today?”
He inquires, tarrying my thoughts to
synthetic syrup, caramel and carbon.
“Yes.” Curt, getting back to the fact

I woke up in a snow-globe, a Bavarian
village. An ephemerid, or at least elven,
loping along with a grin, with a where to be
non der Fund, and frankly fine with it.

“I like to wrap up like a taco,” advising
me to do the same. When I dreamt of
this night, everything happened in the
Sewing room, which was once where

My sister slept and sifted through Garth
Brooks cassettes, or where she applied
A layer of makeup at 12. But it would
not happen tonight, no thing I foresaw.

I couldn’t sleep much in the room supposed
for living, and when morning, I passed a series
of rooms into the one called bath to shower.
Wet hair under a ceiling fan brings praise

From my fingers here, sincerely. Empty
ceramic mug at my left, precipitation fell
to its base, brown coffee grounds and grit.
Black cotton sleeves hide, jeans, bare feet

Walked from the sewing room to see if
Dad had any cologne left. When I found it
In the wicker canister, I sprayed a generous
quota to my collarbone. It smelled Just

Like high school, driving a big brown truck
Through the woods, past the field my mother
Harvests blueberries, and my Father builds
his work, collecting alluvions in an urn.

Today, when to work at 4
post-noon and divvied up
a print project into thirty-one
million little grids, I felt
content in an Analysis.
Ron Sexsmith has given

The day a chance to start,
seeping up from the woofer,
pulsing the curls on my knee.
I could taste the mercury
and muck from the evening
prior, when, after ingesting

Some swiftly-swimming creature,
A ferocious sensation came
curdling from the someWhere
beneath my throat. A roar
not the tune of “There’s Gold
in them Hills.” But the under

Current claiming, agoriophyillicalibliamisharously:

And if we would get off our knees
we could see the forests and the trees

Sung through a pair of grinning jaws, a man
in his fifties and a top-hat, twirls a stop
watch, periodically adding a condensation
to its face. The squatty Peloponesian
repeating, repeating, repeating, repeating

Get off your knees. See
The forests and the trees.

After our meeting, I drove him out
to the suburbs, to the village where
I grew up. Children young enough
To be my own, twenty-four and old as hell
wished they were. We passed the bait
store, and on 9:30’s lusterlacking
black asphalt top, we swung a right.

Salzburg is the name
of a street my parents live.
Granola clings to the walls
of a China bowl of yogurt,
corn-syrup, and grapes
Where I’m hunched over the sink.