no comp

They just want to know whether they can trust me. At this point, they are only asking. And what else can I say but the truth? "Probably." Probably. No one asks me to repeat that one, or to elaborate. They'd like to dig under my skin for their origins, most likely, but the stink of disappointment pervades. It prevails. Truth, that raining of hope and despair, learned of first in the case of the Hastens through their "undwelling," an initiation to a life of unfinished work--truth, calling itself by my first name, Aaron, always talking, very eager to get--not to the point, but towards it--this family loves who I would like to make them out to be, and they are slighted with every invitation. They can't stop calling my name, I can't stop listening to their songs--Claire is a tremendous pianist. Her father never liked anyone to say "pianist" without some thought. If they went straight into it, neglecting to ask themselves or him whether "piano player" might be safer, he was visibly displeased. Grampa loved his words, we all know that: he also enjoyed music. Though one cannot find his grammar-man's visage ever accompanying the uproarious grace of Claire's "pianoing." She said it this way herself: the controversy never took off like she'd hoped, he knew she didn't lie down each night for a dream about pianoing. It was ridiculous. I'm crimson just noting it. But the deadly secrets of the Hastens and the Smiths must be doled out, the author must smack the reader with pittances best served with a cold stare and taken on, worn, shown around, by the reader, who must know the looking glass from many earlier attempts. I can only apologize. I want so badly for everyone . . . not to get along, but to come to their own decisions, or to find motivation about deciding: this is crucial, we can begin to speak of drama if I can have your cooperation. What I give to you, what I think you deserve: for this consideration and the acting upon it, you have no recourse against gratefulness. Staring at you with a delicious and eager tongue, eyes twitching the words unspoken: I want to get back at my father, what I have chronically craved is completion, distrusting the idea preternaturally because it was never more than an idea with a terrific amount of contrary evidence popping up with every nuance breaking on me. I understood only so much about things getting done, I could however increase that understanding over such a span of time: my childhood. Your childhood. There was no other, no one grew up with me, I sat in another home that was abandoned . . . I did this perhaps because that second house was in the thick of a process that had nothing but an end. We speak not of finishing it, the red house will be done--returned to the earth--within a decade. As for nostalgia for the family home, just up the road and across the valley--why, the Hasty house is irrelevant when we're here instead. We occupy each and have little concern with the other.