keen lake

neutral milk hotel #3.
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something about the rhythm of the day or the taste of the air made me tired early; i lay on the dock and dreamed of words and phrases that i couldn’t find uses for: ‘aerie’, ‘murky’, ‘soviet lover’, ‘consequential ankle’. it was that hour when the air comes in colors you’re not used to; i could taste old blue decades and smooth soft green in the cool and grey of it. i lay on the dock half-awake, pretending there were epics about me hidden in the weathered wood against my face. the sun was down and i was cool or grey.

the earth looks better from a star, and i thought i might be on one, so i sighed and decided to write a letter to julian.

i have a pen and paper, so i can finally write you, i started, and then thought for several minutes about scratching out that line before going on. hello, julian. how are you? i know you don’t know where i am, even though sometimes i feel like you do, but i am well and right now i’m on a star called keen lake, and it’s getting dark and i think i’m catching signals. are you happy? or did i already ask that?

i’ve been thinking about what it might be like if i could… well, not make a perfect world, but just rearrange this one a little. at first it was just simple things i would change, like putting music that i liked on the radio, or making more oceans and rainstorms. i would make myself a good painter; i would have more chances to drive down highways with no destination. then, my head got a little more discontent, and i thought about having songs come true, walking through the black forest that i used to dream about (it used to be in my head more than just a forest in germany. there were wolves that talked about scarlet and witches, and the trees were endless and i terrified myself just by standing still there). even greater plans: saying goodbye to you in an industrial-revolution train station, making threads of thought through an atlantis-like universe and finding that i could reach you with them. missing you to the tune of a song i wrote in a butter-yellow kitchen while you worked for something we both knew you wouldn’t get. kissing you as a technicolor mermaid and watching you walk down a long dirt road as a boy made only partly of flesh, and made partly of old guitar strings, pocket-watch cogs, cellophane from 1965, and a jacket given you by a hobo. and last of all i planned to make a world where i could use words and phrases like ‘durst’ and ‘ashen’, ‘wolf fleet’ and ‘watchword’.

i shouldn’t be writing you, since i left to leave you. but then i thought you might be my soviet lover, and i realized i didn’t want to risk losing you if you were. i’m not coming home- not yet; the clock isn’t saying to- but i think you should try to find me because i know that’s what you’ve been wanting to do.

i addressed it ‘julian koster, 10,000 different interstates, skytown, illinois’ and then lay on my back watching the stars, wishing my first sentence hadn’t been a lie.