Words On My Tongue

2007-08-11T15:18:00.001-06:00

Whatever.

Falling Toward the Future

2007-07-27T03:40:00.000-06:00

1. Hands and arms reach out and hold me. They are limbs without a body; actions without motivation; flesh without a skeleton. They grasp and obstruct me as I fall toward the floor. They wish me no harm, but like so many do-gooders, they do not see the full extent of their actions. Their good intentions nearly always go awry somewhere down the road.

2. I once heard from a dancer that walking is nothing but failing to fall over and over again, that walking is simply us falling forward repeatedly but putting out a foot to stop from hitting the ground. This struck me and it made me wonder: is walking succeeding to walk or failing to fall? And is falling failing to walk or succeeding to fall? If the two are the same, is it better to fail at falling or to succeed at walking?

3. Here in this moment, I understand Salman Rushdie. I understand Gallileo and Judas. And Malcom X. I understand Matthew Sheperd and OJ Simpson and Ellen Degeneres. And my mother. And my best friend. And hundreds of years of bloody history. I understand the feeling of suspended falling, the nameless hands holding back your every step, thinking that your feet will not land, that you will succeed at falling: that you will fail at walking.

4. It’s the permanence of words that scars. Failure. Success. These words seem absolute. They are confining. But the scars will heal and we’ll have learned about falling. We’ll learn a new way to walk, a new way to live. And we’ll learn something that we never thought possible...

5. …is not only possible, but easy. All things being equal, the simplest solution is usually the answer.

A BRIEF MESSAGE TO THE INDIE-ROCKERS

2007-04-22T15:46:00.000-06:00

A quick message to the indie-rockers, the psychedelic folksters, the underground garage punks.

Some of you are ridiculously talented. Some of you write beautiful music that the pop machine will neither accept nor embrace. Some of you are lovely, vulnerable things that speak unique languages. Some of you are Indie now, but you will soon be well-known with good representation and a huge fan base if you continue your work and continue improving your craft.

Some of you.

To the others:

It is not good music to sing off key. Your voice is an instrument. Even when letting loose or screaming, you should still be in control of it. Also, harps, auto-harps, flutes, cellos, accordions, and other instruments rarely found in bands do not automatically make you talented. You have to be able to actually play the instruments. It is not enough to half-ass being a flutist or a pianist; if you suck at the toy piano, do not pull it out onstage.

It is not always clever to use your instrument in a way it was not intended. Plucking piano strings one by one may be different, but it takes a long time and I am not here to watch you try to remember which string is which. And please, no more dumping water on toy pianos. I have seen enough water-covered toy pianos to last me a life time. I do not know who started this trend, but it is a stupid one. The piano doesn’t sound aquatic or denser when submerged or covered in water. It only sense softer.

On volume: it is not achieving an artistic point of view to sing so softly that I have to pump my speakers up to the max. That is called you need to stop whispering and learn to use your freaking diaphragm. Soft is okay (when called for), but inaudible is not pleasing to the ear. It’s just inaudible. Conversely, do not just scream. Bjork could scream well (especially in her very very early days). The Beatles could scream well. Part of their success in screaming was in using it sparingly or in contrast to something else. Think about why you are screaming next time.

It is not fun for us to listen to you when you adopt a thick (and fake) accent. You are not a faerie, you are not from Scotland, and you are not from Turkey, stop pretending like you are (unless you really are, in which case, right on). Adopted accents and dialects are rarely executed well and are therefore very hard to listen to because we cannot understand your lyrics.

Lyrics. Your lyrics: they are important. They are part of the music vehicle. Please stop singing incomprehensibly. It only makes me think that you could not come up with a good lyric and are now mumbling your way through things to hide the poor writing. If the eight cellists backing you up are drowning out your lyrics, then maybe you should lose a few cellists.

As for presentation, never, never, never play your sets completely or mostly naked just because. The human body is a complete miracle of nature, but I am here to listen to your art, not see your naked body. It is distracting. Do not dress in random fruit, vegetable, animal, or monster costumes. Hellogoodbye did it, and they were amazing for it (seeing Santa, Satan, an Apple, a Shark, and a Kangaroo battle onstage was awesome), but they sort of broke the mold, and it is time for people to stop trying to rip them off. Anyway, you aren’t probably as charming as Hellogoodbye’s four-man-power-synth sound. Not when you’re copying them, at least.

Finally (this is the hardest part for me to say), there is a reason Indie bands are Indie and Pop bands are Pop. Indie means Independent, as in no label or no major representation. Pop means Popular, as in yes labels and also major representation. Pop bands are popular for a reason: because they are put together (usually) and honed. Indie bands that stay Indie forever are Independent for a reason: they are bad (in some way) at what they do. It could be their image, it could be their sound, it could be their attitudes, but they are definitely not accepted into the mainstream music world for a reason. If you are over fifteen years in the making and still Indie, it is not solely because your sound is different: it is because you are doing something wrong. Please stop blanket-blaming the music industry for your own deficiencies as a performer. If you want to make it, you have to be a mercenary, so stop crying over it.

Fondly,
A listener of all music,
Kyle

TEXT, part 2

2007-04-17T09:50:00.001-06:00

I was hunting down a brace of rabbits, when the hair on my hindquarters stood on end. The air currents shifted and there was the scent of sulfur on the air. I turned to my left to investigate this new aroma and saw – where a small juniper bush ought to have been – two floating words flapping in the wind lazily. The words were backward, like looking in a mirror or pool of water, and the writing was rough and scratchy, as with that of a quill. I circled it and noticed the words were shifting. The writing was becoming loopier and more calligraphic, the text becoming clearer.

When I reached the opposite side of the floating text, the words had become clear and crisp: juniper bush. And then below these words, several more appeared, first in the same rough writing then in clearer and more elaborate script: blooming fully and completely in the sun’s bright rays.

As I admired this phenomenon, there came a scratching sound, like that of a quill on parchment, and then a popping noise, and the words were gone; in their place sat a juniper bush, blooming fully and completely in the sun’s bright rays. Sulfur hung heavily on the air, and the rabbits were gone. The brace was saved not by the bell, but by the bush.

TEXT, part 1

2007-04-16T23:29:00.000-06:00

In telling this, I the word “Meta-literature,” comes to mind. It is the only phrase I can imagine that accurately describes my discovery that I am not actually who I think I am: that I am a character in a children’s fairy story.

There are critics who say we are all characters, and aren’t we all just acting out our destinies as written for us by whomever, but those critics are speaking in a metaphysical sense. And also, they are real. As in they are really living people. I am not.

This is not a metaphor.

This is about scope. It’s about seeing the tiny threads within a tapestry one moment and seeing the whole design the next. So, it is a metaphor but also a conundrum.

LACOSTE V. AMERICAN RAG

2007-04-15T00:25:00.000-06:00

I'm standing in the aisle at Macy's. I was sent home from work at Joe's Crab Shack early after making astoundingly good tips. I have decided to treat myself: I'm shopping at the mall.

I never go to the mall. It makes me feel like a consumer. Like maybe I'm consuming the water and air and creating fiscal debt and inequality just by being there. And I certainly never buy new things for myself. I trick other people into doing that for me.

So I'm at Macy's, and I've been enjoying being there alone, because I feel all growed up. Here I am, looking at men's suits (maybe I should buy one for that big board meeting coming up?). Here I am looking at dress shoes (new shoes for the trip to Aruba?). Here I am talking to a sales associate (no, I don't need help, thank you, I am not looking for anything specific, just anything that strikes my fancy; I'm wealthy enough to just toss money around like this, yes, I am famous, of course).

And here I am in the aisle at Macy's between two diametrically opposed sections of the menswear area. On my left: Lacoste polos of every color. On my right, American Rag and Levi's messy-trendy-college-chic-I-rolled-out-of-bed-and-put-on-these-designer-clothes.

I'm standing on the border of Bosnia and Yugoslavia.

Each section has different music. The Lacoste area features something upbeat and new age. There is a saxophone solo, some piano. It's very Windham Hill. The American Rag/Levi area is all switches from Dave Matthews Band to pumping techno to Jack Johnson. It sounds like any typical college guy's IPOD on shuffle.

Each section has different sales associates, both dressed appropriately for their areas, and both glaring at each other.

I browse each section, and consider buying a Lacoste down vest when I realize that I can buy a hat, a pair of jeans, and a nice tee shirt for the same price with American Rag. And I can do it all without feeling like I'm masquerading as something I'm not. I can pull off ripped jeans and a camo shirt. The pink polo with the collar flipped up is not really my style.

As I work toward the exit, bag of clothes in hand, I am assaulted by a sales associate bearing a tiny vial of cologne. She sprays it in my trajectory, I cross through it, and she says, "CAN I INTEREST YOU IN SOME RALPH LAUREN FRAGRANCES TODAY?!"

"No, thank you," I reply.

"HOLD ON? TRY THIS ONE?" She says this as if it were a question. Try this one? She sprays another fragrance at me without hesitation.

"That's nice, but no, thank you."

"COME TO THE COUTNER? WE HAVE MORE FRAGRANCES FOR YOU TO SAMPLE?" I invent an excuse to escape.

"I'm sorry – Karen, is it? – but I have pressing matters to attend to. I have to get these clothes home for my nephew. He's going off to Burma today, and I've just purchased him some parting gifts. Maybe another time. Thank you!"

I leave Karen to stew in the cloud of cologne and escape Macy's (quick, before Karen realizes I am wearing a Joe's Crab Shack uniform and am not rich or famous at all!), and, as I exit, my cell phone beeps. Someone has text messaged me.

I pull the phone out, pretend it is ringing, and answer it.

No one has called me, but something within me decides that it would be a good idea to pretend someone has called. So I stand outside the mall for thirty minutes pretending to talk with a friend from London. In this conversation, I am from London. Part of my faux-conversation goes like this:

"Cor! She did not! That Tina is a right slag! It don't matter if she's knackered or not, she can't be holdin' out on Tommy, innit! He's a man, and he has needs. Right? Right? Am I right?"

I am copying a dialect I heard while in London. It's sort of a street slang. In Britain, they call people who talk like that Chavs. In the USA, we call them wiggers.

Families, couples, strange single men. All pass by me and stop to stare. Who is this odd British man talking on his cell phone at this mall in the Midwest of America? I start to run out of conversational things to say and start shouting out random words and phrases I learned while in London a few years ago.

"Blimey!" (shit!)

"Sarnies, we ate sarnies." (sandwiches)

"No, I'm out of cash, I need to get to a hole-in-the-wall." (I need to get to an ATM)

"Am I bovered?" (Do I sound angry?)

"Alright?" (Are you okay?)

"Innit!" (No way!)

When I exhaust all my phrases, I hang up my cell phone, and march off into the parking lot, looking for the entire world like a rich and famous British Chav, off to give some clothes to my nephew, who is headed to Burma, didn't you know? Except I am wearing a uniform for an American restaurant. And I am driving an American car as if I have always driven in America. And I own an American cell phone (which I call a cell and not a mobile, like Brits mostly do). And I drive back to my modest American home where I plan to go see an American film with my American friends. American.

LIES, LIES, ALL LIES

2007-03-15T22:42:00.001-06:00

When I am five, I am climbing this massive oak
*** maple
*** dogwood tree.

It is thirty feet
*** twenty feet
*** it is ten feet tall.

I am swinging in this tree
*** climbing in this tree
*** precariously perched in this tree
*** sitting securely in this tree when a bird suddenly flies by
*** this huge gust of wind
*** I get scared of the heights easily, and
*** I slip and fall.

On the way down, my left foot gets caught between two branches, and I get stuck there, upside down.

I scream
*** wail
*** yell for my mother, but she does not hear me, and I hang there for three hours until all the blood rushes to my head and
*** for an hour until I grow queasy
*** for about five minutes until she comes for me.

I almost died
*** had brain damage
*** was traumatized
*** I was really scared
*** I was fine.

*******************************************

When I am five, I fall out of a tree and my foot gets caught in the branch. I hang there for five minutes until my Mom helps me.

Interragtio Obscura

2007-02-20T15:32:00.000-06:00

Still mining out old writing. This is an interview I did with someone. They are all his words, except for the words I supplied ("eating," "breathing," "puking,").

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In telling you this, I fear that you are categorizing me. "You're a number 10 Sanghuin." Or something equally absurd. A friend tells me that on a scale somewhere, flamboyantly gay men are "Trendy Orange," and he tells me that he is "Charming Blue." I don't even know what to do with that. I'm not really trendy, but I like the color orange. Or I'm an EEDPT, an extraverted something something something. That is what worries me. That you'll understand me too well.

- Breathing: born, Millington Tennessee.

- Peeing: doing it outside makes me feel like a man.

- Wounding: my uncle is baby-sitting me, and I gather that he isn't really too interested in babysitting me, so he puts me up on a window-sill, and it is high up, so I can't get down, and he just leaves me there and exits the room.

- Loving: there is love in my life, especially Disney movies, especially Jungle Book and Dumbo.

- Eating: raw tomatoes and cooked parsnips.

- Voting: 2004? Kerry, because I'm a staunch democrat and I think he is the better choice.

- Creating: today I want to have children. They will be raised in the city.

- Fucking: I let somebody pee on me once…but I didn't like it. He did. I was just being adventurous.

- Adoring: dogs.

- Killing: cats.

- Puking: the musical CATS.

- Remembering: my dreams. When I get stressed, I dream I am being chased by tornados with personalities, like they have faces.

- Admiring: the character Sally Jessie Raphael, though she ought to be dead by now.

- Regretting: not attending my sister's wedding. I say I am in a show and can't make it. This is a lie.

- Sleeping: can't literally do it all day, but I do like to sleep periodically on rainy days.

- Daring: emotionally, no, intellectually, no, physically, no, socially, yes.

- Believing: handwriting analysis does exist, but it is not accurate.

- Loathing: Paris Hilton. Isn't she everything that is wrong with America? She gives us nothing and we make her famous.

- Wondering: where have all the flowers gone? Weren't they paved over for a parking lot or something?

- Annoying: babies. And special, too. They're annoying specifically because they're so special. They can't be ignored, and that makes them special and annoying.

Is that it? Are we finished?

Wonder of the World

2007-02-07T03:40:00.000-06:00

There was a period of time during which I wrote many visions of Armageddon. The following is one of them.

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WONDER OF THE WORLD

by Kyle Kratky

It came like a great rush of water or lightning. It came like a colossus; a force of nature, it fell upon the city like a crashing wave.

There was at first a massive sound, something like a horrible scream-in-the-wind. Glass shattered and danced on the ground like a thousand fireflies sputtering out their last show at the sudden, spiraling end of summer. Birds took flight, making it only a short distance before very immediately falling to the ground dead, the sound and the fury too great. Dogs howled and the ground rippled like water, sending fractures in highways across the world.

The sound spread across the city in an instant, blanketing the buildings, streets, parks, schools, and people.

Then there was a silence. People flailed and slumped, some falling to their knees, some slamming on their automobile brakes, but entrenched all in the inescapable feeling of a great impending something-or-another.

And then it happened. The sky itself, the very firmament above the city, began to fall.

The denizens of the metropolis – and, subsequently, the world – responded differently, some running for cover, others standing in numb, silent marvel. Children dropped their toys and books and looked up, staring at what would never have been believed, had it not actually happened.

The religious cried out prayers to their gods before their fate—a weight heavier than steel and thicker than molasses—toppled onto them. But there was no God or Allah or Shiva to hear the prayers. Their words, like the troposphere above them, were empty.

It was beautiful and terrifying.

A yawning, colorless void stretched itself out beyond the spinning, falling pieces of blue and white. The entire thing was cut into spiraling fragments of azure, periwinkle, and ashen cream.

The whole world thought in poetry for those final moments.

The trick came in the perception of it all. The pieces fell quickly, but something about the human mind makes one think things are happening slower than they truly are, resulting in later remarks such as, “If only I had reacted faster,” or “I was too slow to stop it,” when, in fact, the event happened so quickly and without precursor that any prevention or logical reaction would have been impossible. Though none later remained to comment on the falling sky, if any had survived there would undoubtedly be ambitious citizens making such claims.

“If only I had reacted faster, maybe I could have saved my daughter.”

“I was too slow to protect my father.”

It would have been impossible to stop it, of course. People should have known about this, they should have known the sky would soon collapse. Earth had tried to warn them about their cars and their factories and their landfills. The melting of the ice, the growth of the bugs, the increase in disease. It tried to tell them, but they were involved in other, more important things, and did not have the time. In the end, Earth decided to simply rend the sky in pieces and start anew.

The scraps of sky fell quickly – in spite of the brief-lived opinion of their velocity – black, jagged shadows quickly growing larger and larger below.

Everyone stared at it: the greatest, most terrifying wonder of the world.

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Yep. Armageddon.

I think I thought it was good writing to be conversationally vague. "a great something or other?" What?

a little solo work

2007-02-04T11:22:00.000-06:00

Best if read aloud.

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Train of Thought

by Kyle Kratky

I’m departing from St. Louis, departing from the Amtrak station, my sister Laura, Laura with the golden hair, Laura with the snaggle tooth, Laura calls it the Amshack station. It is a twenty square-foot shack with faded white aluminum siding and one station attendant. The lone attendant seems to have been holed up there for months. He is always unshaven, his hair is always tousled, and he has an emptiness in his eyes that suggest his burden has exceeded what he thought it would be. Sissyphus, Atlas, Jesus, they have nothing on the Lone Attendant. This is what greets people traveling via train to St. Louis: a sullied shack and a hollow man.

I stake my position on the train next to a trendy woman with Hillary Clinton hair and a Saks Fifth Avenue bag. I make sure I am sitting upwind of the family with two babies so as not to get their scent, and I am out of view of the eight year olds trouncing about offering to sing Christmas carols to whomever will listen.

In four minutes and thirty-two seconds the socialite next to me is snoring snores that would scare off half of Jurassic Park. It takes only two minutes and twelve seconds more for the caroling children to begin scurrying by me every fifty-four seconds singing a different carol: In the space between the shouted lyrics of “Thumpitty thump thump” and “Then one frosty Christmas Eve,” I can hear a Gap/Old Navy collegiate fullback two seats over talking on his cell phone about the hot piece he banged last night, talking like he wants the whole train car to know, and maybe he does, probably he does, but this shit always happens to me on the Amtrak.

The train is forever departing twenty-two minutes late, arriving forty-six minutes late, stopping to let freight trains by, and as I sit and gape at the streaks of green, orange, and yellow zipping by carrying diapers, cars, and machinery off to distant suburban Candylands, a tidal wave of anxiety engulfs me like there will be no tomorrow, no tonight, like my train will never arrive in Chicago, like we’ll get hijacked by Bedouins or raided by bandits or bombed by the ever present “TERRORIST THREAT.”

I don’t travel. I’ve never had the money to voyage to London or Florence, and I am not brave enough to risk Thailand or Tanzania like adventurous world travelers. Study abroad seems counterproductive to my career goal to build theatre contacts here in Chicago, and youth hostels are too much like Space Camp (where I never slept and rarely ate) to excite me.

I have never wanted to be a migrant worker, and the whole Razor’s Edge experience is too Zen to me. I am roaming the countryside, moving bales of hay for food and meeting Buddhist monks who compare my life to a cosmetic device (“Your life balances upon a razor’s edge,” they whisper ominously, hoods drooping over their faces, the scent of myrrh in the air burning my nose), and all the while I am trying to stifle my laughter, trying to withstand the heat, trying not to kill myself from loneliness when I am alone or out of desperation when I am not alone.

Because I’ve tried meditation, you see, and I can’t seem to “harness the calm.” (Harness the calm, that’s what my friend Rachel says, Rachel with the suburban life, Rachel with the "life partner" named Kyle.) I can’t do it; because when I tell my mind to harness the calm, my thoughts collide and start playing etymological leap-frog with the words floating in my head.

Harness: cattle, black angus cattle, shoved in cages, killed, eaten, slaughtered, bloody faces, familiar places -- Gillian Hastings, my short don’t call her short she’s not short she’s special and beautiful best friend Gillian Hastings -- Hasty pudding with the little medallions in it, it is sweet and pungent and my Aunt Kim made it -- Aunt Kim in Oregon with the money and the parakeet and the piano, sending my mother nice gifts but they truly hate one another because they are sisters and -- O Sisters, my sisters, we’re drifting, building our own lives and I can see the kinship, the closeness washing out to sea as Angela buys her son a new DVD player, as Laura begins to take the tarot cards too seriously, as I lie about how I can’t come home on Thanksgiving because of a show, that’s right, right -- right, wrong, Einstein sips brandy and sits in an easy chair in my anterior lobe, telling me that light is both a particle and a wave and it bends when it passes at a finite speed near to an object with large mass, with large gravitational force, and if the whole universe is held together by four inexplicable forces, forces that could cease arbitrarily at any moment, then how the fuck am I supposed to clear my goddamned mind and harness the calm especially since there is a German-born Prince of Physics, a Guru of Science, Father of the Atomic Age sipping brandy in my brain?!

“CHICAGO UNION STATION is next ladies and gentlemen, Chicago Union station will be our next, last, and final stop for the evening.” And somehow, my five and one-half hour trip is over and I can see the Sears Tower looming at the threshold of the city like a mother waiting for her child who has been out long past dark. She is shaking a finger at me, scolding me, asking me, “Just who the hell do you think you are?”

One of the very fist things I ever wrote.

2007-02-03T18:00:00.000-06:00

A Picture is Not a Promise Made
by Kyle Kratky

“Look.”

“I know.”

They stood on the balcony of the three-story townhouse overlooking Brighton Park. The trees swayed in the wind as the dog-walkers below released their charges for a liberating run. Some of the dogs barked loudly, but mostly they trotted along in silence, overjoyed by their release.

The two men stood for fifteen minutes, and their limited conversation was the first they had shared in over one month.

“I’ll miss this.” Matt indicated the park and the tree-lined street below. Jacob exhaled loudly, relieved that they were speaking again.

“Me, too,” Jacob said, gripping the rail. He shivered and drew his dark, long coat around his lean body.

That they were brothers was impossible to tell except when they were in the presence of their mother—people gasped and said things like, “Now I see it,” or, “It’s the eyes!" Their mother was their hydrogen bond, and discussion of her lately brought their temperatures to a boil.

They stood in silent conversation for a bit before Jacob made to move indoors.

“It’s getting colder. Autumn is here. Let’s go inside.” He turned, opened the French doors, and stepped inside, the wind chasing him in. Matt took a deep breath before following him in.

Jacob kicked at an empty wine bottle lying near the doors before sitting awkwardly on a large crate full of old picture albums and frames. Matt closed and latched the doors behind him, staring out at the sky. Jacob broke the silence.

“Listen, Rebecca and I are going to head up to Laughing Hills for a week or two. The leaves are changing; it will be beautiful.” Matt did not respond. “We want you to come.” Matt snorted. “She wants you to come, “ Jacob said, looking away. “She really cares about you, you know?”

“Yeah, yeah…I know.” Matt turned from the window and looked at Jacob. Outside, the dogs barked. After a moment, Matt crossed toward the hearth. He pawed at the old soot and ashes with his boot.

“I do, too. Care about you, I mean.” Jacob spoke without ease, his voice wavering and cracking. Matt smiled and looked back over his shoulder at Jacob.

“Well, shit. Mom cared a lot, too.”

“That's nice, Matt."

“Hey, do you think Rebecca cares as much as Mom did?”

“She cares an awful lot, Matt, considering how you've treated her, but listen: I thought we said—“

“I know,” Matt said, chuckling. “We said we wouldn’t talk about her. We said we wouldn’t.” He turned around and leaned against the mantle. “You said we wouldn’t.”

“Matt, I'm not here to play this game."

“Well, hurrah, hurrah, the game is on.” Matt cheered.

“If you are going to shout, Matt, I am not—“

“Fine, Jacob,” he interrupted.

“Okay?” Jacob replied.

“Yes, okay, fine, good, great, whatever.”

“Like I was saying, I don’t want to play this who-said-what-to-who thing with you, okay? I just want to…I don’t know. I just feel like we need to talk more. That’s all.”

“I thought we weren’t talking."

"Well, no, we haven't been."

"No," Matt interrupted, "I thought that's what you just said. I'm not talking, right, I'm yelling. Or something."

"Jesus, Matt!"

"What, Jacob?"

“It’s not about her, about Mom! That's not why I want to talk.” Matt took a step forward, his interest piqued. "Always the youngest. Take it to the most emotional, let's not concern ourselves with the actual logical considerations of what happens when someone dies."

The wind stopped blowing and the trees grew silent.

"It’s about Houndsburrow, the house at Houndsburrow,” Jacob said. Matt seemed taller.

“What about it?" Matt asked.

“Well, you know that Mom left it to both of us, half and half.”

“Fifty fifty.”

“Right.” Jacob took a deep breath. “Rebecca and I have been talking and she thinks—I mean, I think that we ought to…well, we think that we ought to get the place, Rebecca and I.” Jacob braced himself. Matt was sensitive about the house in Vermont.

“Why?” Matt asked. It was less than Jacob had thought he would get on first mention of the exchange.

“Well, Rebecca is due in three months with the next, and we already have Aimee and Alan. Our place is getting tight, and we’ve been thinking of moving up around Houndsburrow for a while now. It’s a very nice community with outstanding schools. The kind of place in which we really want to raise a family.”

“So, you want me to give up my half? My fifty?”

"We'll give you two-fifty for it. Two-fifty for your fifty."

"Ha ha, Jake. Thanks a lot."

"Come on, Matt, you don't need the place like we do, and--"

"What, we can't fucking share the damn place? It's got six fucking bedrooms and a guest house!"

"Rebecca doesn't want--"

"Plus, you know, Jake, it’s all I have left of her.”

“Oh, please, Matt, don’t play that card with me.”

“I’m not playing any card, Jake. It’s all I have of her. The last thing I have of her. Besides all these photographs and shit. You’re the one who insisted that we sell this townhouse, and now I have no place to live, except Houndsburrow.”

“You have Emily,” Jacob urged.

“Oh, yeah, Emily will love that. I can’t even stay the night at her place, Jake; we always end up fighting over some dumb shit."

"I thought you two were doing well," Jacob said.

"Yeah, Jake, doing well for us means we can go out without screaming at each other."

"Weren't you going to propose to her?"

"That was four months ago, before she didn't come to my mother's funeral, Jacob, Jesus Christ!"

“Okay, I'm not going to fight with you, Jacob."

“I know, you're not gonna fight, you're not gonna fight, that's so freaking high and freaking mighty of you. these are my fucking feelings, Jake. I'm glad you can keep yours bottled up like the WASP Dad wanted you to be, but excuse me please for expressing myself now and then.

The dog-walkers had left the park below and only a couple remained.

“These are my feelings and they matter," Matt continued, "and you are asking me to give up Houndstooth so you can share it with that goddamned woman and build your picket-fence life without me.”

“Matt, let's be reasonable, I—“

“No, I won’t be fucking reasonable, Jake. Not how you want me to. You say 'be reasonable,' and what you mean is, 'Agree with me because I am right.' Anyway, I'm no the reasonable one. You are. Rebecca thinks so, Mom definitely thought so.”

“I beg your pardon?” Jacob said, taking several steps toward Matt.

“You beg my pardon?" Matt laughed. "Christ, you can be sanctimonious. Yeah, Rebecca and Mom. They both always thought you were the reasonable one, isn't that strange, how alike those two always acted?"

"Matt, what the fuck--?!"

"I mean, actually, Rebecca might like some of this art Mom’s collected, don’t you think?” Jacob was silent and trapped. “Yeah, and how about Mom’s clothes, I bet she’d like to pick some out, don’t you think?”

“Matt, don't you --” Jacob paused, trying to gain control of his voice, “How can you say that?”

“I mean, I guess you’re just fine with Houndstooth and your little fucking replica.”

“Fuck you.”

“Oh, come on Jake, let's be reasonable!”

"Fuck you, mother fucker."

Matt roared with laughter. "I think that term is maybe reserved for you, Jake." Matt’s voice cracked. “Did you think no one noticed? Did you think no one could tell?” Jacob stood silent, glaring at his brother. “She dresses like Mom; she thinks like Mom; she cooks like Mom! Jake, she even talks like her! ‘Teeny tiny!’ Why don’t you just dress her in Mom’s robe and you two can sit there on that god damned old couch by the door and wait up for me at night. Yeah, I'd love to come live at Houndsburrow with you, that would be fucking grand. Yeah, you really got yourself a catch, Jake, a fucking catch. I guess since the older model broke down, you had to buy the newer one?”

“Matt.” Jacob growled.

“Face it: you couldn’t fucking handle Mom’s health, so you ran off and found a younger, prettier, healthier one! That’s great, Jake. Happy fucking wedding, I wonder how the honeymoon worked. Did you sleep in the same bed even?”

Jacob rushed at Matt.

He slammed his brother square against the fireplace, Matt’s head connecting hard with the mantle. Matt let out a yelp and started flailing his arms against Jacob’s face. Matt ripped Jacob’s spectacles off of his face, and they flew against the far wall, where they shattered. Jacob wrapped his arm around Matt’s side as Matt pushed against him. Jacob resisted, but Matt was lower and had more leverage. He pushed hard and Jacob’s slick shoes slid on the wood floor.

With a little leverage, Matt jabbed Jacob in the ribs several times with his elbow before Jacob was able to free one hand and grab Matt by the hair. Jacob pulled hard as Matt groaned. Matt wrenched his head free just in time to fling his head directly back. The back of his skull connected squarely with Jacob's jaw. There was a loud crack. The two skated awkwardly across the room, still grunting and beating on one another until Jacob’s legs collided with the crate of pictures.

The crate fell over, spilling out hundreds of photographs, old picture frames, and several large, bound photo albums. The contents spread beneath them as the men toppled over onto the pictures, some of the frames cracking and popping open.

The two wrestled as Matt managed to flip Jacob into a supine position on the floor. Straddling his older brother, he began to hit him repeatedly in the face. Again and again he struck Jacob, blood falling from Matt’s hands onto the pictures littered around them.

Jacob shielded his face as Matt's blows grew lighter. Matt shuddered and began to openly weep.
“I loved her so much; why couldn’t you? Why couldn’t you stay? Why couldn’t you help, God, why couldn’t you help? She was sick and in pain, so much fucking pain, she wanted you and weren’t there—you asshole, why couldn’t you stay? She loved you so much…” Matt lost all his strength.

He broke down, sobbing into Jacob’s chest.

Jacob opened his eyes and placed his hands on his brother’s back. At his brother’s touch, Matt jerked upright and raised his fist to strike Jacob again. Jacob cringed and covered his face, but no attack came.

Matt slid off to Jacob's left and picked up a photograph that had caught his attention. Jacob, perplexed, rolled over, sat up, and looked at the photo Matt held.

“What is it?” Jacob asked.

“It’s that day. The day after Dad left. That day in Brighton Park, remember?” Jacob slid up behind Matt, and, wiping the blood from his face, he looked over Matt's shoulder at the photograph.

“Oh, yeah…I was fifteen. You were --”

“Eight.”

“Right. And you had seen the homeless man sleeping on the bench.”

“And I wanted to give him food, so we…” Matt began to cry once more, letting the photograph fall onto the pile memories. He buried his face directly into Jacob’s shoulder. Jacob picked up the photograph, remembering the day twelve years ago when their mother had not been ill, and they had all lived together in that same townhouse full of Italian art and flowers.

“So,” Jacob resumed up the story, “we made him peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and ham salad. We took it to him, along with s bottle of wine and a bottle of sparkling grape juice, a large blanket, and some potato chips, and we ate with him right there in the park.” Matt sniffed and lifted his head. His face was shiny and wet, his eyes bloodshot and tired. “We wanted to get one of the dog-walkers to take our picture, remember, but Mom didn't want to be in it.”

“Right!” Matt laughed through his tears. “It was just the three of us.”

“Right.”

“Yeah, and I remember the sun was really warm and the breeze was cool and there were all those birds --”

“Oh, yeah,” Jacob said. "The birds. How had I forgotten the birds? There were thousands. They almost blotted out the sun; a giant cloud of birds.”

“Beautiful.”

“Yeah. Beautiful.” The two sat and stared at the photograph for a long time before speaking.

“I’m sorry I broke your glasses, Jake.”

“It’s okay. They were cheap.”

The children were out of school and now played in the park below.

Jacob placed his hand on Matt’s head and leaned against him. “You know…you don’t have to come up to Laughing Hills with us to vacation. It’s really not that—“

“No, I want to. I really want to.” Matt looked up at his brother and smiled. "But we have to talk about Houndsburrow."

"No, I'm sorry I even suggested it, Matt."

"No, listen, Jake--"

"It was really more Rebecca's idea than my own."

"I think I want you two to have Houndsburrow for yourselves.”

Jacob sat up. “Are you sure, Matt?"

“No, I'm not sure. Not yet. But I think I want you to take it. At least for a little while. I’m going to take these pictures instead,” he said, holding up a photograph of an elegant dancer with strong shoulders. Then Matt spoke in such a way Jacob had never heard his younger brother speak.

“It can't just be like this. We can't go back to the park with that smelly guy and Mom and the birds and all that. It is going to be hard.” Jakob took the picture from Matt and sat in front of him. He held his little brother’s hands, and he was flooded with emotion. Jacob looked at him, this man, only twenty-five years old, who had been forced to take care of a dying woman: a young man who knew more about pain than most people would in their entire life. Jacob could see the age and ache in Matt’s eyes. For the first time he felt guilty -- for everything, not just for running when their Mom got sick. For the first time he felt alone. For the first time, he felt like he didn’t know Matt.

“A picture is not a promise made, Jacob.”

Jacob cried, and lunging forward, he held Matt tightly. Matt firmly placed one hand on Jacob’s back and the other around his neck, cradling his crying brother. His head buried in Matt’s chest, Jacob only said one thing. “I'm sorry, Mom..."

Matt cradled his brother, and all the Pietas in the world wept.

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Upon review, maybe not so bad.

I've just unearthed loads of old stuff, so I'll be editing and posting a lot over the next week or so.