I bet there were a lot of things that I thought I would remember.

So big, at least to me in the moment, they were assured to scribe a place in my brain that I would tread and retread as life moved ever forward.

Whatever they were, grandiose and revealing, I hope someone else was there to preserve them – because unknowingly and only in hindsight, I’ve found it’s the moments I thought absolutely nothing of that have somehow endured. Stealing that space and tattooing their own small likeness in lazy circles that both bemuse and confound.

Funny how the smaller part of a much larger whole overshadows it when you begin to view your life as a quilt, rather than a tapestry. A recipe, both trial and error, on a stained and handwritten index card; instead of a neatly plated dish, served warmly but sadly whole before you.

Ambridge was where my grandfather drank.

It was a member only sportsman club. Trap and Skeet, weekly raffles. 2 acre pond stocked with garbage fish. The clubhouse was down a winding gravel drive that no one dared to traverse in the winter. Steep drop offs and unmaintained shrubs and trees – you'd miss it if there wasn’t an old hand-painted sign pointing the way. Every year a new pin. Simple tin with the same logo. Different colors and different years, my grandfather had decades of them. Warped and faded on an old canvas jacket he hung in a half-finished basement with a minibar and barely functioning box set. Cheap trophies of a humble and quiet life.

I’d watch ‘Crocodile Dundee’ (only interesting tape he had – others were just nature documentaries) on that tv, toss logs into the furnace until grandma yelled the house was a sweat lodge and pretend I didn’t know he hid the gun closet key on the rafter next to the stairs. He had an empty can of Budweiser mounted like a deer on the wall, the plaque read ‘I’ve Killed Hundreds of These.’. A jackalope too his friend Earl had made. In the corner was a rusted drill press and an elk shed – the only time he’d ventured out of state, romantically seeking to stalk and claim the big beast, but returning with nothing but the cast off remains of a trophy already passed. I don’t know why he kept it.

We apply a lot of pageantry to life. Dress it up. Mostly to protect ourselves – show must go on and all that; but fuck if we don’t all just want to be the guy on TV who makes it look effortless.

I remember catching a dollar-bill at the pond by the pistol range. Pap used marshmallows on the hook – the pastel-colored ones, which were better somehow. It was originally a prank. I didn’t magically catch a dollar; I found it all silty and gross on the shore and put it on the hook. He wasn’t looking and figured he’d get a kick out of it. He’d laugh, I’d laugh. Dumb kid shit. He taught me how to make a fire by that pond, how to clean a fish and he told me what remains the most fucked up joke in my arsenal (did not age well). But weeks later I’m back in TX and get a package. Cheap frame from the dollar store, cardboard backing and that dollar taped to a plain printed text that read, ‘Some people hunt bucks and fish for fish – my grandson fishes and catches bucks!’. He didn’t know it was a prank. Wish I still had it. But one night after the divorce really wanted that 40oz of Steel Reserve, was a little short and wasn’t feeling sentimental. People are people. Most of the apologies you owe in this world are to yourself.

Chasing the rabbit. Wanting to impress him. He was larger than life you know – not just in stature. We talk about heroes, but they never did it for me. Heroes always fell flat. Those things that made them remarkable often made them unobtainable. It was the ones we could achieve, could embody and thus mitigate their flaws that I found value in. Not heroes, no, but icons. And Pap was an icon. It was somehow genuine with him, even if it never kissed the silver screen. The next morning, bacon in the cast iron, he gave me a compass. Said ‘Check which way you’re heading before you run off. So you can find your way back.’. Thought that counts, it was cheap and holds direction for shit. But still have it in a tacklebox in the closet. Fucking rabbit that I am...

I had mailed it off to him. My ‘A’ school graduation picture. All of us, in our dress blues, feeling... probably something different between each of us. I don’t know. It hadn’t made it to the mantle, next to his retirement watch, deflated game ball and Grandma’s urn. And maybe that wasn’t an insult – maybe that was just a dusty place he returned to when the day was done. Perhaps here it still held life, ambition. A backwoods, backwards bar in Pennsylvania. Smiling each of us to those who we wanted to see. Kiner, Boudin, Winters, right there next to me. My crossed cannons. Gunners Mate. Source rating, back when that was thing and you came in under contract. Failed at the latter but ever so proud of the former as it rested comfortably amongst antlers and Canadian whiskey.

I realized time had stopped for them. A moment had extended to a perpetual, yet inevitable end. Those things now, pinned to the corkboard among old photographs, were their last grasping efforts at youth. Trophies of those who still could traverse uncharted waters and thus gave a last dying flicker to the flame they yet clung to as their embers waned. Not the theft of potential, no such thing, but rather the mourning of their own potential squandered and so lost.

But I think about it still. Hypocritically. No breath was stolen, but none was spared. My lungs still carry a hint of that musk – it is on my breath, on my tongue, it lingers as I speak. Thus, in some small way, Ambridge remains. Clawing at an undecided and foreign future that it influenced but itself could never survive.

I think and may hold apprehension, but think that the moments now where I find contentment in the futures of others and those small things I hold dear – could fucking possibly be that place. Yet stirring, yet surviving. Corkboard on a memory wall. Pinned there and whispering ‘it’s good while it lasts and somehow better when it’s passed’.

He had told me once that 99% of what we do will be judged by the 1% we don’t... or fuck up. I get the temptation. To revise or remember those things we ourselves did or are for their best possible light. To erase or avoid those things which ruin that dearly held fantasy. I get it, I really do. But whatever it is that’s a part of me; the consequence thereof is a choice. The more educated the better. After all, it’s a quilt – this stitched together thing we so value as complete. Logan Echolls once said, “They don’t write ballads about the ones that come easy...”. Fuck I hope my life is a song, not a spreadsheet – because I’ve never learned anything from perfection. Can’t buy a legacy. I mean you can, skyscraper with your name on it and lip-service to a shitty painting in the lobby. But that ain’t a song. Not something sung with a smile. You get it or you don’t...

Ambridge was where my grandfather drank.

I don’t know who I am to my daughters, don’t know who I’ll be to my son as he wobbles around my living room now. I don’t have an Ambridge – a supernatural stretch of turf that somehow connects two kingdoms and all their needs and ambitions for each other. But I don’t believe what Pap said about those 1% of our actions defining us. I think maybe the world would convict us on it, sure. But the ones who’d sing our song, those that matter, will fiercely defend the 1% on account of the 99. I know I would for him...

-

“Strength without compassion is, and will only ever be, tyranny. So Justin, have the strength to be kind.” - A. Muchow (Pap Pap), 1927-2019.

Optical

Topical

Illusions

Reiterate

The

Impression

of

Movements.

It's

The

Expression

Of

A

Moment

Frozen

For

All

Time

As

If

Paused

And

Placed

Aesthetically

On

Display.

Kinetic

Art

Like

A

Heart's

Beat

At

Play

It

Keeps

Moving

Tread

Carving

Grooves

Cutting

Lines

To

Prove

It

Is

Doing

what

it

Is.

Its

Thumbprint

Ensuing

From

It's

Path

Via

Our

Brains

Gray

Cellular

Synapse

When

Viewing

The

Rifts

Delicate

Decay.

To

Make

Legitimate

It's

Moment

Of

Movement

Into

Actuality

Realized.

Reality

Actualized

Longevity

Forming

When

One

Day

Art

Formed

An

Artform

Initially,

And

In

A

Way

At

It's

Forefront

Art

was

A

Movement

Authentically.

Where

Since

Then

It

Has

Been

The

Start

Of

A

Community

Communing

through

The

Time

We

Took

Taking

The

Opportunity

To

Introduce

A

New

Look

To

See

A

Concept

To

Shape

A

Form

Who's

Conception

Is

Purely

Formed

Through

The

Expressive

Elements

Uptake

Only

Finalized

When

Received.

This

Guided

Intent

Gilding

Raw

Outcomes

Of

Active

Passions

Reactive

Outputs

Into

Our

Sinew

An

Income

Stomping

Stamps

Of

Dancing

Dances

Tapped

Deeply

Freely

Upon

Our

Cellular

Center

Stage.

In

These

We’ll

Find

Our

Future.

By

These

kinetic

Firings

Sparking

Thoughts

We

Pray.

We

March

Forward

Tracing

Woven

Ways

And

The

Neural

Wiring

Is

Decided.

Mapping

The

Mental

Potential

Pathways

Of

Our

Thoughts

To

Be

Guided

To

Come,

In

Coming

Days.

Future

Causes

Inspiring

Effects

As

a

basis

From

Which

Is

Sprung

Creation

Enriching

Ways

For

Us

To

Further

Enumerated

Epithets

Fodder

And

Accoutrements

If

The

Expressive

Testament

Is

kept

Wholly

To

The

Moves

These

Meanings.

Make

A

Kind

Of

An

Etiquette

To

The

Kind

Kinetic

workings

Of

Time

That

Is

Spent

And

That

We

Take.

True

Progression

Of

The

Mind.

Art

Moves

And

Art

Makes.

Cyclically

Perpetuating

Mundane

Progeny

The

Day

By

Day

Yet

When

Looked

At

Close

Its

Pulchritudinously

Ornate.

Where

Art

Is,

There

Exists

Expression

Expanding

Through

time

In

space

Where

Direction

Was

A

Decision

A

Choice.

Within

That

Moment

Where

We

Find

That

Voice

Grace

Is

That

That

Speaks

Silently,

Though

Inarguably

Perceived.

The

Narrative

Of

What's

Paced

Gets

Received

Art

The

Culmination

Of

What

Was

Used

To

Be

Part

Forming

Part

Of

The

Input

To

Calculate

The

Data

Computed

Art

Is

This

Sum

SSTThe e

Some

Thing

to

equate

To

The

Impression

We're

Left

With

That

Part

Left

Is

What

Matters

It's

Art

What

Art

Uses

To

Move

Us

Moved

By

What

It

Meant.

Made

To

The

True

Us

The

Symbiotic

Nature

of

Kinetic

Art

Contextualized

In

Text

An

Art

Formed

By

Phrases

Scrawled

In

Lengths

I

Write

If

In

These

Pages

I'm

Right

Read

Me

Through

The

Ages

Give

Me

The

Life

It's

Musings.

The

Moving

Parts

Are

Part

Of

Us

Bright

Is

Our

Collective

Kinetic

Spark

What a sight.

On this site

I miss people

I don’t know

I never met

But whom I see

In their entirety

Because

We reveal ourselves

In these moments

We string together

Words

In code

AI

Could never

(hopefully)

Replicate

What does AI know

Of a first date

Of the sorrow

And beauty

Of seeing

A field

Of your deceased person’s

Favorite flower

Can AI

Walk with me

Drink with me

Cry with me?

It can’t

But what if

It could see me

Then what?

Shells. It has been days since everything changed. I don’t know what day it is now, and I don’t care. I think I was at work when I heard, but I have no recollection. Did I leave with you? Can I? Time and hope were just a mirage in a feigned utopia that no longer exists. Life with you in it is gone and so is everything else. The universe has collapsed unto itself and what is left behind is nothing but dust and vacancy. A big gaping hole gasping like a fish on dry land. And I can’t catch my breath. I feel guilty when I think about the devastation I feel. This isn’t about me, but that’s who you were. You changed everyone you crossed paths with for the better. We didn’t know what was missing until we met you. The shine of you cast light upon all that was good but also all of our ugly, hidden, dirty, shameful, broken, lonely, and the loss within us, and you loved us like we’d never been loved before. A rebirth. And we will never know that love again. You gave what was once meaningless—meaning. How could someone who carried so much pain deliver so much joy? Your heart opened wide for us and we suddenly knew what it felt to be safe, seen, and accepted. The essence of you swaddled all of us no matter where we were. No matter where you were. I met you when I was at my lowest. You knew how to navigate the rubble I was under, you were there too. Our connection was so deep, a true soul connection. Your words both said and written spoke to me as though we had always been together since the beginning of time. Just thinking about the depth of you moves me. We both struggled, but our souls together could sustain it. And now you are gone. I should have called you more. Texted, written. Reached out more. I cannot process this pain. I know there are stages to grief and so I tell myself, this too shall become tolerable. A new norm. But I know better. You were a once in a lifetime human. And for that, I try to convince myself to focus on the blessing of that. And that’s true, I know that most will never have the fortune to meet a soul like you. But your human death is different. And I don’t think I’m going to survive it. I am ruined, I give up. I love you so much. Your energy is next to me but I don’t think it’s enough. Something changed when you left your body, and I don’t want to acclimate to humanity without you. I feel guilty for being selfish about this. But I know you would understand. And that’s all that matters. How did you make everything okay with just a word or two especially when I know you too were hanging on by a thread. Even when we didn’t talk for months, you existing made life manageable. You were and are an angel. A light. Energy that cannot die. You are a part of me, of all of us, and I feel your presence. I know that you are okay now. I know that peace and love everlasting has washed over you and you are everything you ever were without the pain of flesh. You have been and will always be the purest and rawest and realest of all that is beautiful. But for us here, we are stopped in our tracks. Putting one foot in front of the other because that’s what we do, but where are we going now? What is the point. “It takes two people to make you, and one people to die. That’s how the world is going to end.” William Faulkner.

I see her sitting at a pit stop in Kentucky. Her boots up, her wild whiskey grin. Laughing at the lot of us still trapped in this melancholy hell.

“I reckon you all have chills when I step up on you.”

Let me sink here in your tatted skin. “I’m not earthbound, anymore.”

Laughing at our bloodshot lives and wasted plans.

“I’m still here, somehow.”

Let my heart bleed out onto the kitchen floor

remembering her will

the pain of it.

”can you hear me?”

Her hopeless light of marigold

Her stubborn fight against the dying of the light.

”I’m with you, can you see me?”

Her death blowing a hole

straight through the universe

and shattering the moon.

”I love you all, I’m still here.”

We are stolen by her

memory

Our beloved

Shells

Her ghost forever

lives within those

of us who felt the

certain and sudden

drop

from

heaven

as her spirit

hit the sky

Rest now.

Shelley “Shells” Gilreath

May 18th 1981 - April 18th 2025

(3 different people talking 1,2, 3. Gender M,F.) *A dialog pull from ‘Recidivism’ (work in progress) repurposed for a short story.*

1M: I’m just saying it was a different time! People got it, they were chill. Patriotism AND humor – all intact and rarely the fuck at odds.

2M: “You’re just pissed your tattoo didn’t age well.”

3F: ‘Wait, what tattoo?’

2M: “Purple heart around the pee-hole and a ‘Do it for your country’ banner on his navel”.

3F: ‘Oh fuck… you do not. That is sooooo cliché.’

1M: Fuck off, it was hilarious. And healing.

2M: “And short term. Dude, you’re missing a fucking leg. Fun while young, but future prospects? 3-legged race at your son’s Scout meeting; you’re just gonna… hold hands?”

1M: Low blow. Benefits of being a human tripod, I’ve got a spare.

3F: ‘What? If it’s hard? You getting hard at Scout meetings now? What the fuck did I miss!?’

2M: “Literal purple heart on the tip of his dick... Upside: Now that you got those weird plum veins in your feet because you drink and sit to much, it might actually pass as a third leg. Just keep it way from young boy adventurers.”

3F: ‘How do I not know about this?’

1M: Scouts? Because it used to be cool and you weren’t allowed.

3F: ‘No the… fuck you. World’s smallest fiddle is a gesture, not a gender.’

2M: “David Carridine died covered in jizz from auto-erotic asphyxiation. He was in ‘Kill Bill’.”

1M: Not fucking relevant.

3F: ‘Was pretty relevant to him in those final moments… Wait, did you arrive there because I mentioned gender and you jumped to ‘weird things to do with your penis?’’

2M: “I did. And to the maid who found him. “Fresh towels?... OH FUCKING BANGKOK JESUS!! – Pronounced of course in the Spanish ‘Hey-Sous’… Spain did a lot of good there. Took their annunciation of the glorious Christan language but gifted them firm Mediterranean asses.”.

1M: You think she, he, she-he tossed one over him. I’d like to think I’d have tossed a towel on that wilted celebrity celery before phoning… Press first, then manager right?

3F: ‘Duh. You work in a fuck-hotel in Isis Bermuda. Of course Press first. Then towel. ‘Kung Fu’, cash and dignity matter.’

1M: That’s my other tattoo.

2M: My yearbook quote.

2M: Oh shit. Mom’s turning on the porch light.

3F: I find it disturbing that you call your wife ‘Mom’.

2M: She calls me ‘Daddy’, it’s equal exchange – fundamental rule of ‘Fullmetal Alchemist.’.

1M: Cartoon reference, really backs your point.

2M: Hey, professor McSnob, The Mona Lisa is just a cartoon that took too long. If she’d showed some tit there might have been a sequel.

3F: If you’d showed some… Eeew!.. thought I had something and came up short.

2M: No shame. I always do. That’s why me and mom don’t have kids – thighs if I’m into it or belly if I’m bored…. That and the rampant erectile dysfunction. Star spangled Blue Chew.

1M: Speaking of chemical cocktails, how’s the TRT working?

2M: The ‘Teddy Rosevelt Tangents’?... ‘Let me aggressively tell you about national parks’… Not well… I struggle with impulse control and short term memory, bought a lot of Lego sets and then yelled at Mom because I never finished them.

1M: I don’t know why she has to be like that.

2M: I don’t either.

3F: Kinda a bitch.

2M: But great tits.

1M: Unlike that cunt Mona Lisa. Flat as she believed the world to be…

2M: That’s why she’s smirking, cause she’s secretly got a dick.

3F: …And wouldn’t even throw a towel over David Carradine.

1M: Also, feel like that’s the CPE not the low T. Old people and heavyweight boxers; both captivated and beguiled by cat puzzles.

3F: That’s why they’re next to the coloring books.

2M: Fuck you Target and your assumptions. Candy is next or same aisle too, isn’t it!? Skittles in Titos when you’ve lost your shit, Werther’s when you’ve just shit yourself.

1M: Not mutually exclusive. The satisfying sound of that golden wrapper as you just give in, no control, let it slide into that Depends while nodding about that 7th grandkid’s baseball game; when you only had the energy for the first two and now seek death…

Lot of pussies out there.

Who cares? There’s three of us here – so we just gotta worry about those 19 other shifty bastards.

3F: That’s why a cat will eat your fucking face after a stroke on the bathroom floor, but a labrador will wait till the last possible second.

1M: Dude, what the fuck?...

3F: Evolution. Cat’s binary code is solitary and opportunistic – so they wade right in. Dogs need a pack, without it they hesitate. Numbers enable the worst aspects of their nature, not skittish solitude. Hence, people are mostly dogs; but there’s a few arsonist cats lurking among us.

2M: Yeah, fucking women. What’s going on with y’all!? Severe need to check in more, buy a few scratching posts – I was good with a tennis ball – but you’re over there entertaining fucking Eldritch terrors.

1M: Sam Neil? Into the Mouth of Madness… That was Eldritch, right?

2M: Oh so want a mash up of Jurassic Park and Event Horizon! Rex yodeling into the

void as his maw slowly freezes over…

3F: Holy fuck!? Wasn’t the *brooding* ‘Trauma…’ medic guy also the *stupid* ‘Clever girl…’ dude!?

1M: Sensing some weird glue-stick stains in those panties over Britan’s illustrious Jason Isaacs… and no, ‘Clever girl…’ was General Bob Peck. Your voting is protected, your interjection is not.

3F: Little hurt you referred to my involuntary discharge as a ‘glue stick stain’.

2M: A guy’s discharge is referred to as a ‘money shot’… *imitates Nixon* ’Yet we have

balanced equality.’.

1M: How y’all feeling about the new Vudu?

3F: Literally never heard of it…

2M: Lot of fucking magnification. Trying to make everything a swiss-army knife… Jack of all trades, Master of none. Would rather just dedicate the platform. Fuck the pounds, better to carry two Masters than one ‘Well, it does both…. Kind of…’.

2M: You know what I struggle with?

1M: Being locked in in traffic, front back and sides – panic attack while waiting for the light to change?

2M: No… Yes… But, no… I think I’ve been protecting the best parts of me by building this… layer… of bullshit. I’m worried, well not worried, but you know, is there a day when it’s all just bullshit and the best parts, you were trying to protect are just… buried?

3F: If they’re your best parts, they can take it. You’re protecting your biggest advantage, per training – but just use it. You lose you lose, at least you got bloodied honest.

End:

Hey baby, you’ve been out here a while – food’s ready.

2M: My bad, fire pit isn’t level, I think. Not sure, there’s like a… tilt. Sorry got locked in on it.

All good. *nudges the empties* Awfully expressive…

2M: Oh, headphones *points* I was pretending I was on Rogan and being interviewed.

Gotcha. You know you’re weird right?

2M: Sexy weird though, not Astro Van and gotta register when I move.

Trash, fucking please, then food. Movie night, my pick.

2M: Yep, yep.

this thing that's happening

feels like worst-case.

I am trying so hard

not to say too much

but you won't talk to me

so all I can do

is keep. fucking. talking.

can't shut my damn mouth

as I keep on spiralling

brain says,

he's done with me now

it's over, i think

he never saw a future for us

--or worse, still, --

something is wrong.

don't leave me in silence

because I dont know

how long I can float here

before my words

to ease your upset

or anger

or anything else I can construct in my mind

will stop and

i finally

fall to gravity.