Notes from the Editor's Desk -- 4/25/22

By morning is a profound presence shed upon malleable sands. Whereas yet neither element can inherit the properties offered by the other, they mingle their claims for a time to produce an effect and no change. Driver and passenger have travelled to obscure the dawn, not by virtue of having gotten up early, but rather owing to their endurance of the night, which makes this scene unearned. Most readily available is this memory of the morning’s meaning. To observe one another, to be in the presence of the other, each awash alike in summery aura, was also part of their dual purpose. Still, the memory has begun to exclude the other, as this was not an occasion that lent action to memory, but rather was the action lenten in its reserve, although rife with contact and observance. An explosive pale mist, as of then yet to be dismissed by the sun, was a setting that makes it easy to lose track of the passenger, wandering then the strand. Where exactly attention was doled out at the time is difficult to surmise, but attention now favors a period of isolation from atop the lofty post, favors the give of wood, and the distance from the ground. Motion forced its way through the medium of the lake and onto the lake’s shore. Motion suggested its presence despite the condition of misty stasis. A return would eventually become necessary in proportion to the diminishing of a distant song and the return of form to scrutiny. No mist obstructed the cabin.

Upon returning home, the enchantment wore off, which would have been replaced by a sense of existential concern, were it not for idiocy. Only an ache and exhaustion pervaded. Habit had not yet created a form to receive and alter failings. Entering down the screen porch’s flagstone walkway and up loose concrete steps, the ancient door there not wired to the system’s alarm, I slipped into the basement unnoticed, and there slept, doing as little as was expected of me. I reoccupy the time and place as readily as I do the present, but I occupy the changes to the original feeling, and not its actual space. And so live ever — or else swoon to death.