Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow: A sonata of words in four parts. Part IV: messages

My dear friend,
I know it has been a long time since I last wrote you, though I hope you will forgive me. Certain circumstances have prevented me from sending you letters, and besides, until now I could not find the right words to write, and without those this letter would have been pointless. The months have passed, and the seasons have changed, but I am sure that I will be away still a while longer. Do not think I have forgotten you, or that I do not think of you, for you are in my thoughts often. You wouldn't believe how beautiful it is here. The air is sweeter, as is the water, and every time I inhale, every time I drink, I feel as though I were in a special kind of paradise. Even the light, it seems, is somehow cleaner, purer. I am sure that both the days and the nights are longer, though it doesn't seem possible, but everything moves at such a relaxed pace that it doesn't strike one as the least bit surprising. I am certain that my work will keep me away longer even than I expected, though I am uncertain as to just how long that might be. This will be the last letter you will receive from me until we see each other again. You know, as always, how to find the messages laced into this letter. I trust you will know what to do.
Until we meet again,
Your dearest friend

Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow: A sonata of words in four parts. Part III: The colder winds

I can taste snow in the colder winds of autumn. The warmer winds hold the memory of summer and wrap themselves around in a friendly embrace, as if to say, "Goodbye; I'll see you next year." Soft breezes, neither warm nor cold, rustle the leaves on the peaceful autumn afternoons, their faint whispers dying after so short a life. Such brief breaths just as the transient autumn is brief, only a season in passing on our way to winter. But the colder winds hold a taste of snow, so faint that perhaps I imagine it. Even the winter winds that bring on the snows do not taste of snow themselves, as though those tiny flakes deny the winds they ride on of any flavor they posess. The winter winds are coldest of all, but the colder winds of autumn are colder still. They stir the air and bring a chill in a way that winter winds cannot, for icy caress of the winter winds touch faces that are already shivering. Faces that have had time to learn to ignore the cold. The colder winds of autumn bring a chill that is unexpected. They sneak up and spring themselves upon you when you least expect it. And they through stuff at you, though the colder winds of autumn don't have the greatest precision in aim. I swear that several times I've passed this one tree and an acorn falls with more force than can be attributed to gravity in a spot where I had been standing only a moment before, and then once one fell right in front of me, where I was about to step. The quick gust that accompanies each of these attacks disappears as soon as I look up. Something else I've noticed: those colder winds are always dry, even when everything else is soggy and wet.

Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow: A sonata of words in four parts. Part II: teddy bear: a poem

Our backs against a tree,
she read aloud, to herself as much
as to me, and I listened.
Orange leaves (and brown and red)
carpeted the little hill.

"I feel cold," she said.
She looked at me, a wry grin
touching those rosy cheeks;
"I envy you — the chill doesn't
bother you, does it?"

Back inside the house,
I sat on the bed as she changed and brushed
her teeth. The lights out,
she gave me a quick squeeze and sighed.
I watched the ceiling all night.

Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow: A sonata of words in four parts. Part I: Never enough time

I was walking to school one brisk, chill, autumn day. Towards the end of my walk I always cross the park (or "common," as it's called) and that little interlude almost always instills in me a sense of peace found in few other places. The walkway is uneven red brick and there are plenty of trees and grass and open space -- a built in respite from the harsh, fast-paced city life. On this one particular day -- I suppose it must have been early in the afternoon -- the common was loosely populated; a few people passing through, some sitting on benches, others out on the grass. I was halfway across when a dark brown average sized dog shot across my vision like an arrow. My first reaction was to remark to myself just how arrow-like the dog's rush was. My second thought, following the first within the same instant, was to wonder what it was bolting after, and my gaze followed the dog's path, which led to the base of a tree. My eyes caught the flicker of movement as a squirrel darted up the trunk only far enough to be out of its pursuer's reach. The dog, whose momentum had carried it past the tree for only the slightest moment, had adjusted its movement quickly and stood now with its forepaws a little ways up the tree, eyes intent on the squirrel. I saw no more of this scene as I passed by, but as I continued my jouney to school, I breathed in the cool fresh air and smiled to myself.

louder now

I can see them coming, friends with worry in their eyes and concern in the question they all share: am I alright; am I okay? I give them my best smile. Yes. Everything is alright; how could it be otherwise when the scent of freshly cut grass persists stubbornly just outside the window, while someone sings brazen showtunes in the parking lot, and I can see my car nestled perfectly in that slot next to my last class? I smile again to send them on their way and then turn to stare at the window once more. What do they see? I wonder if, perhaps, there some secret in my reflection, some ghost in the glass to expose the flaw. I search desperately for something, anything to fill that hole in my understanding. What am I missing? My thoughts fade as the singing falters outside and is replaced by the sound of cursing as a dreamer is led back to class.

...

In the middle of July a boy sits down to write an article for a blog that has not been updated in over a month. He sits and stares at the white, the piercing white, that seems to swallow up the whole screen. The little vertical line is blinking, waiting to be pushed aside by the words rushing in to fill the white. Nor words come. Still, the line blinks.
Ages pass. The white remains, the line blinks, no words have filled the void. Tides rise and fall, stars die, continents shift, grandchildren become ancestors, the centuries fall in and out, and the page remains blank. Time stands still, time dies. No words. The boy's no writer. Why should he write?
So he writes...about not writing. As he doesn't write, there aren't words, and the page does not begin to fill. The little line does not move from its spot and the words do not rush in to push it aside. The boy does not update the blog, and the writing that wasn't written does not get published.
This is how the boy is left, with a blank page on the computer screen that was never written on.

cat by day

When the day draws to a close and the sun falls into scarlet fashions, my cat comes to sit in my room with her back against the setting sun spilling through the window. She seems fixiated on the inky shadow she casts across the floor and onto the wall, and while my sister believes she is just soaking up the last rays of the day, I think she is simply awed by just how much her silhouette looks like batman.