you're talking a lot, but what are you actually saying? no offense intended, i know sometimes you're talking to me, and i get your gist, but sometimes i think you're just thinking out loud. like, thinking about what words you'll put to the pictures. no worries, it's all good, gnome sane, lol.

 

a kid from ray school wrote this note i suppose, and who knows who it was for, we're not even supposed to walk here on school property, but i take the message for me and charlie and everyone we love on our way around the neighborhood.

charlie at the decaying temple on a stump. the temple appeared last year on a pressboard table now collapsed. there were candles and a jar of rice and folded paper offerings, gone. where a temple disintegrates, where a person dies, there's a space of return, even for strangers who happen by daily. 

 we know who the real terrorists are. we have to try to tell the tale true.

 

 outside, benny's happy and dances through the leaves in the thin strip of city woods by the train tracks the park district has left alone for the present. we never know how long the present will last in the city that works. inside he goes directly to his bed and looks at me and i try to get a picture of us together but i'm outside of it, but my keffiyeh's in it, and my chin, and it's about benny anyway. after a couple of pictures he turns to lick his body where the cancer grows. i hope he's not in too much pain. i hope we have more joy to come. i was a little hesitant in mind at first but now i'm feeling blessed to be part of benny's life.

 i got a birthday solstice stone from r. i never heard of before, phosphosiderite. it wasn't supposed to be for me, but it called me. it helps you explore past lives. it brings light. it connects the physical the physical world with the spiritual guides. i don't know if you believe in stone energy. when i bought my ruby finger the seller said she doesn't feel the stones' energy, which was forthright, but she believes others do. i felt that ruby finger, and i feel this phosphosiderite, and it feels good. it's my turning sixty-five solstice stone, from r.