Paul was written only at lunchtime, be that 11-12, 12-1, 12:30-1:30, et cetera.

Paul was a project that would build off itself in the continuation of commentary daily. A building process. Rather, the stacking of words as a record of the passage of time. Not necessarily the importance of observations, but, completion of a cycle of a post a day, for an entire year.

Paul was return to the scene of the crime.

Paul was each week they choose a theme & invite producers, writers, documentarians, poets, musicians, et cetera to take a wack at that theme. While not formally invited, Paul took a wack at that theme as well.

This week’s theme: Return to the Scene of the Crime

 

Act 1: Hyperlink

 

Last week This American Life Live! was beamed to theaters. Paul was a review.

 

Act 2: I remember

 

Paul was unstuck in time. While riding the train home he blinked and was back in Bethlehem at Christmas. Not bible Bethlehem, Bethlehem, Pa. He was visiting his sister and together they were looking for a gift for their mother. The small shops were filled with tree ornaments, statues, and candlesticks. Lori fancied a teapot with a hand painted chicken on it. Paul inhaled some fake snow and sneezed.

 

He was in Holcomb Kansas. A place even Kansans call ‘out there.’ He walked into Hartman’s Café and was suddenly on the moon. Not the moon moon, but the firebombed ruins of Dresden which resembled a moonscape. Kurt Vonnegut almost always mentioned this city in the books he wrote. Even in an offhanded manner. Such as in Slapstick, the former President of the United States, Dr. Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain, living on the Island of Green Death, or Manhattan, is given a Dresden candlestick. He dies the next day. So it goes.

 

As a blog, Paul was subscribing to Vonnegut’s ideas of time not being a continuous line, but always was and always is being. The past is still happening in the present. You can try this by scrolling down or reading any archived post. And so on.

 

Paul blinked in time with gunshots. Lori said “I remember when on my birthdays you had to do whatever I said. Like get me a yogurt.”

 

Paul remembered repeating himself often. He found truth in that repetition. As in the gravity of one event that sets off a chain reaction. A firebomb for Vonnegut. Kansas for Capote. Playing “I remember” with Lori to fill in an absent father.  

Paul was sneak into his sister’s dorm or sleep in the truck.

Paul was fiercely loyal to place because his father, Paul, was not.

Paul was to keep account of passing. Because postcards aren’t enough Loraine. Because maybe I want to understand the reinvention that is between. One card he is working at a farm, another her is logging. Another card he has visited a gold mine & then the one “Ocian in view O! The Joy!”.

Paul was keep me posted.

Paul was told ‘time is money” & believed it when coupled with quantity not quality calling, a manager making rounds three times an hour hanging up “too long calls.”

Paul was collecting dust.

Paul was scripted silence.

 

 

 

 

.

Paul was no spam currently in the queue. Must be your lucky day.

Paul was water splashing on the homevideo lens, then

Paul was misery.

Paul was didn’t go to school the next day.

Paul was trying to think of a better childhood memory.

Paul was remembering it all wrong. Or was that an action of retelling? The transcription of the event could never contain the event itself, but merely a shadow of it, or, a blown up movie version. Maybe Hemmingway.

 

Still, a choice at restraint, or embellishment, the insertion of other histories, timelines, jump cuts.

 

The action of storytelling.

Paul was it took time for information to develop; thoughts & events to be transmitted through the wires; actions to be carried out.

Paul was a calendar.

Paul was a timesheet.

Paul was tracing. Backwards.

Paul was pause here for sadness        .

Paul was

Paul was a blog. Or, created as a procrastinative

act to contain time. Moments typed, pressed, held; mostly in avoidance of other projects/living that was going on. A need to always be doing something with hands/mind/hands

/time. A catalogue of such missings.