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Winter sky at sunset.

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

RIP Tom Robbins.

submitted 27 days ago • 0 comments

Ceiling, Morgan Library, NYC.

submitted 29 days ago • 0 comments

Hey, American Primeval: nice closing music bed.

submitted 47 days ago • 0 comments

toolsforworkingwood.com/store/blog/1...

submitted 52 days ago • 0 comments

Light doing things, front door knob.

submitted 60 days ago • 0 comments

Ben slowly raised his hands from where they’ been pinioned. He bent his elbows and turned his wrists to approximate his fingers’ positions if he was holding a tenor saxophone. In his mind’s ear he could hear himself playing behind Dolly as she sang “Look.” His fingertips fluttered gently. He smiled.

submitted 75 days ago • 0 comments

The faces stared at one another. “You think…” one said. “…I do,” the other replied. “All right,” Face One said. “We’ll take ‘em off, but you can’t say how they got that way.” “Okay,” Ben said. “Just get ‘em off. Your secret’s safe with me.” Face Two made quick work of the task, and the two vanished.

submitted 76 days ago • 0 comments

One by one the masked faces drifted out of view until only two were edging away. Ben thought, now or never. “Excuse me,” he said. The faces kept moving. “EXCUSE ME!” he yelled. “Hush, what?” one said. “I need to get out of these restraints,”’he said. “It’s the least you can do after that foul-up.”

submitted 77 days ago • 0 comments

“Faulty connection,” the returning face said. “Or maybe it got yanked loose. Whatever. Cardio monitor went down, triggered the defib alarm and the rest. Sorry, Mister…umm…” The face unsubtly scanned Ben’s chart. “…Er, ah, Scraggins, yeah. Mister Scraggins. Sorry ‘bout that, sir. Won’t happen again.”

submitted 78 days ago • 0 comments

The tableau froze. The face with the paddles lowered them. “How do you know?” the face said. “Because I know what defib feels like,” Ben said. “And I’m not experiencing those sensations.” A face left the group. More faces left. One returned holding up what looked like an electrical instrument jack.

submitted 79 days ago • 0 comments

“Clear!” a voice shouted. The array of masked faces rearranged themselves to admit a new masked face, this one with arms ending in hands clutching defibrillator paddles. “Clear!” the face shouted, eyes meeting Ben’s. “Stop!” Ben barked with as much authority as he could muster. “I’m not in defib!”

submitted 80 days ago • 0 comments

Nothing seemed to happen, then everything seemed to be happening at once: a repeating honk over the PA system, anxious trills from the bank of machines at bedside, the whir of rubber wheels on the tile floor, masked faces arriving to hover over him, only worried eyes visible. “Hi, folks,” he said.

submitted 81 days ago • 0 comments

His head cleared. He blinked. He was strapped to the hospital bed guardrails by his ankles and wrists. There was no use in struggling. Under his right palm he felt a thing on an insulated cord. The thing had a button on one side. He tried grasping it such that he could push the button, then did so.

submitted 83 days ago • 0 comments

Shards of the Paris nightclub dream cluttered his head: Miles and Trane, cool and hot at the same time, navigating the nuances of a duet improvisation, the dim house lights caroming off the cymbals, the intensity in the faces around the room, a cigarette ash suddenly falling into its holder’s drink.

submitted 84 days ago • 0 comments

He decided he was awake; his arms were straining against something pinning them. In the half-light he saw machine screens displaying data in time to a chorus of beeps, hums, clanks, whirs, and disembodied muttering. He recalled people in scrubs leaning at him to ask the same questions over and over.

submitted 85 days ago • 0 comments

Ben awoke groggy from his recurring dream of being just offstage watching Miles and Trane playing in Paris a million years ago. Sometimes the musicians were inviting him to join them. Every time he woke before he could. Not this time. He couldn’t move his arms. Was that the dream or was he awake?

submitted 86 days ago • 0 comments

Dolly raised her arms and shimmied as Margaretta eased the dress up and off. “I don’t know as I’ll ever wear this getup again,” she said. “You keep it, all right?” Dolly nodded. “Now throw that trench coat on and get to bed. I’ll be in touch come morning. Bye!” They hugged and Margaretta was gone.

submitted 87 days ago • 0 comments

She did, and was taking the front steps two at a time as Dolly, shivering in blue and silver, opened the door. Margaretta administered a brisk hug and spun Dolly to put the fastenings in reach. “Hold still, dear,” she whispered. “The old fingertips aren’t what they once were. But they’ll do. There!”

submitted 88 days ago • 0 comments

A profound shiver chased her inside. She realized with a start that she still had on the beaded dress. How was she going to peel it off without help? She got out her phone and tapped. “Ye-ess?” Margaretta said. Dolly explained. “Okay, Margaretta said. “I’m coming. At this hour I can double-park.”

submitted 89 days ago • 0 comments

Exhaustion washed over Dolly as she climbed the front steps. She turned toward the street just in time to see Margaretta’s hand retract into the Volvo. She watched the old station wagon ‘til its taillights had vanished. The house was so quiet the oceanic residue of the long night surged in her head.

submitted 90 days ago • 0 comments

What if he called her? A bold, pre-Interweb stroke, to be sure, but fraught. She might be chill, but what if she went off? Or worse, ghosted him. He didn’t want to get that far sideways with someone he really liked. Was it better to risk having her wonder where he was than have her break things off?

submitted 91 days ago • 0 comments

Light doing things, Katzen Center.

submitted 92 days ago • 0 comments

Matt Ubered home, unsettled by Dolly’s radio silence. As he was leaving the music hall, he’d overheard a couple of techs gossiping about what sounded like a medical emergency involving the old guy who played sax in Kerf, what was his name—Bill? Ned? Glen? He flung one more text into the cloud. Nope.

submitted 93 days ago • 0 comments

The black frame dissolved into a full-color memory of Ben at his desk as he bent close to proofread a paper draft. He’d propped his reading glasses high on his forehead so he could drop them into place as needed. Jocko was at his side, leaning against the chair as if offering an editorial opinion.

submitted 94 days ago • 0 comments

“…Don’t ever go…” she sang in a whisper. “…Don’t ever go…” As if on a mixtape loop the vocal and the tenor riff repeated and intertwined. The camera eye withdrew to infinity, a still on his mental screen framing the two of them fading from to black. “Don’t ever go…” he said aloud. “Don’t ever go…”

submitted 95 days ago • 0 comments

The oceanic sound of silence enveloped him. He stood a long time in the second-story hallway, gauging the tonal shifts that occurred when he rotated his head this way and that way. An image came to mind: Ben onstage, playing the fade to “Look of Love” in tandem with Dolores’s repeated closing line.

submitted 96 days ago • 0 comments

"You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal." James A. Baldwin

submitted 97 days ago • 0 comments

“I didn’t want to go into the channel. I decided I would rather blow up with the Fortress than drown in the channel. I took a heading in the direction of England and said to myself: ‘Here goes.’” rayboomhower.blogspot.com/2021/10/catc...

submitted 97 days ago • 0 comments

Toting the Precision and thanking the music gods for relieving him of the need to wrangle the flptop with its bulk and weight, he began his trudge up the three flights of stairs. Halfway along he remembered that he still had his earplugs in. He leaned the bass against the wall and pulled the plugs.

submitted 97 days ago • 0 comments