returning to typography : no more dreams of the ocean and that soup of faces

detailed painting given to him by his friend of the boat they were on together until the injury



He is not working on letter forms again. An unseen swarm of molecules is not twisting and bending like locust in arcs and turns, atoms not amassed in a pen, a piece of paper, a worn chair, and 8 fingers.

There was a boat in 1989. It had a captain and small crew. It was and may still be some color if not under the cold waters or long splintered against some dull rocks.
The men would have been faces, arms, legs, names, but they are not and due to two minutes across a phone line will never be more than a fog if even that.

There was to be a 3 month agreement. It was found by a friend in the back of a magazine with a name of some kind and a readership of some number, these details forgotten, submerged as unimportant in time along with so many other things.

The length of several phone calls with the friend may still remain in old records, perhaps on oversized floppy disks in storage, or in a newer transfer of unused information buzzing away near invisibly numerically in some database of no clear purpose any more but remaining.

The possibility of injury such as the loss of fingers (or worse) becoming clear and one last 2 minute call, its blasts of air deflecting off plastic now long thrown away to decay, in some moment errant and impulsive at 19, this did not lead to missing digits, a need to return to a love of typography and font making born out of dull, repetive physical therapy and time.

He is not staring at that letter, perhaps an R that just never looks right...blows the whole alphabet, makes it disposable and not to use.



latest page of fonts ... 50's office door letter forms and something more of the shapes of old technology...

the window to the bottom of the ocean/ psychologist on Ventura Boulevard

The man born from the boy above is not up late reflecting on his life. He has not been a Psychologist for several years. He has not earned a private practice, a nice office on Ventura boulevard, a receptionist and a view of the cars whizzing past the courtyard. He has also not had those nightmares. He does not dream of others moments that he can not speak of or of drowning slowly in storms at sea. He did not take the ability to interpret symbolism, body language and personalities and behavior and make it his career all this time.

He did not carry the ballast of other's pain. At least not this way.

He changed his major back to English after that one semester nearly 20 years ago. The decision came oddly out of a clear blue day of calm sitting on the campus lawn eating a salad. His mother was dying. She had attempted suicide just 2 years before. This brought many dreams of winds blowing out windoglass into snow in slow motion onto her...he unable to stop it.......of her mouth that for many years could not say words speaking.....saying short phrases that made him awake cold and in tears.

The office thus untethered, is divorced from gravity and atoms. This moment now floats in a trillion particles in the ether, gnats from what might have been.

never to walk

He is not rolling along in his wheelchair looking out the window of his small house by the entry ramp. His parents in 1969 did not opt for the experimental surgery, first of its kind....risky the doctors said...and unsure to work...

The man of the boy above is not feeling his hands along the metal wheels as they spiral toward a view of the grass freshly watered.

The sun is not along the glass into his small living room as he lets out small noise as he thinks of taking steps, a limp, scars like small railroad tracks,the lines and worn old thoughts thin as window glass.

the life of a phd and lake effect snow....

The man grown from the boy above is not currently walking a nondescript section of hallway in Rochester, New York passing posters for campus events and frantic last minute calls for room mates. His stomach does not grumble with hunger from forgetting to eat again. There is not a meal of spaghetti waiting to be made in a package of pasta, sauce, some bologna left over from sandwiches and a paper plate to save money.



He is not thinking of snow on a break from researching syntax, punctuation, sentence constructions and the flow and erasures in meteorology while finishing his dissertation after all these years......passing a row of windows while missing a point about collapse in rain storms.....

He has not been there for 8 years now.

A non existent snack of some peanuts from a bag from his backpack is touching some alternate non-formed version of his lips in this unrealized instant,...diverted...unborn by a piece of paper in an envelope in 1998 rejecting him for a PHD at Rochester, in that instant a plane flight decoupling, its trajectory and
flight number unmoored of his single strand, a seat available that hadn't been booked yet, as a room on campus shed its details, colors , smells, the width of its walls and bed of him, of a million filaments to other moments in his then 29 years..





this is a still from a film he never made of lake effect snow clouds to compare to the ballast of years and seeming depth in the vagueness in old words like "sea" "Sky" "Grave"












this is a photo from an album of the outlines in the snow of him and his room mates at Rochester New Years day 2000