Hey, let's go somewhere else.

And so Thunk comes quietly to an end.

I've decided to re-challenge myself, to go back to the days when I used to write columns. So, yes, a new blog.
New course heading.

If you've enjoyed reading Thunk, I invite you to come try another side of me. (Boy, that sounds odd.)

Come read Hash 'n' Eggs. New columns every Sunday morning.

And thanks for reading.

....

You are, of course, everywhere here. No one else sees the intersection in the center of town like I do. It was one of your favorite stories. I see the shadow of buildings gone or changed, outlined in memory and meaning. Strawberry frappes after basketball games. The pizza place we always got from but never went into--it just wasn't that sort of place. A parking lot haunted by a storm-blue Chevy Nova, you and I taking slow laps around it. It's how I know when to lay off the gas. Every day is a tribute and every day is a heartache and every day I could tell a story and the sad part is, I should have 19 more years' worth to tell.

I will take what stories I have. I will see those faded moments flicker past. And I will see your smile everywhere I look except here, next to me now, where I most wish it was.


I love you, dad.

Walk, With Ghosts Intact

[There will be no explanations.]

Starting from the place where we went in the summer to get truck tubes and glossy black and whites of Rico, Yaz, and the Conigliaros. Across the street, the house on the corner and the second floor windows marking the narrow room where interesting things happened. Years later, the other one said, "I swear to God, if you say a word..." I never did. Down past the ballfields I was never good enough to play on although I thought I was, past the tarmac basketball court where I and my fallaway jumper would shine on sweat-humid summer nights. They'd set up a rack of bleachers and we'd play for our parents in a mist of gnats and everybody wanted to be Hondo. I watched you come down on the back of your head, stopping the moment hard and cold, leaving a slight spatter that stayed there for years. Along the cemetery wall where, me being so cool and you so young, I said I could call you at any time. I didn't count on you showing up again, reminding me of it since I'd forgotten, mythology and damage inciting me to irreparably complicate things. Turn right at the pond where I heard they found you, the water washing away a nightmare of deeply layered issues. I knew the family but not you so much. You were just a kid then and the street between all of us got wider every year until we couldn't hold a decent game of kick the can anymore for the gaps we'd created in our heres and theres, and at the very least we couldn't keep making Davey "it." He caught on. Along the Boulevard, the "don't you go there" Boulevard where everybody went, the acrid vulcanized smoke of brakestands coiling in the night air, now overgrown and narrow. We were there. We were supposed to be cool. You were making out with the girl who hadn't quite accepted being a lesbian yet and the tire went flat and you had no spare. I walked in the snow because I lived closest, the cool kid going to get his dad. A guy pulls up to the van to lean out the window and ask "You wanna buy some purple microdot?" and dad, stoic and casual, turns to look over his shoulder and says, "No, thank you." Behind the building where we shot the sketch where you ate out of a paper bag hidden in the dumpster. I wanted your girlfriend because in my mind she deserved better. I sunburned the tops of my feet for her. Jammed the brakes the night she was making out with another guy in the back of my car. Kissed her once and thought it was perfect. Someone pointed me to your commercial. It was great to see you, but it made me wonder where she is now. Past the store where one day we said sooner or later we'd take each other seriously, leading to you in gossamer and the both of us dreaming. Around the corner where you and I would head for school with "Truckin'" by Bread cranked up on the stereo, thinking we were cool despite the fact that there's no way Bread could be considered "cool." I was cool because you had the van. Shotgun in a captain's chair worked for me. Up to the  house I must have passed a thousand times going place to place and thought to thought, never really seeing it, holding no hint that I would end up there with a girl who convinced me otherwise in a camp chair one night, me searching for quiet while we spend our days creating new ghosts that we have yet to name.

Mantra

"Writing is when you make the words. Editing is when you make the words not shitty."--Chuck Wendig, in his essay, "How Not to Bug the Fuck Out When Writing A Novel."