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Les Trs Riches Heures
Danny Malboeuf
In shuttered rooms, in whispers white
She sleeps by emerald candlelight
She dreams of fallen seraphim
In velvet, stained with ancient sin
A shadowland of shadow smiles
Where blood, like candy, fills the aisles
A copper tent we call the sky
We'll burn the ladder, close the eye
The girls will kiss, the stars will die...
- The Book of Keb
Tell me your first memory. I'm fascinatedby first memories. Mine is a checkerboard
kitchen floor, in an apartment... in a town
called Cherryville. Next came oceans, and
storybook monsters that were as real asJesus. Waking up, drowsy from eternity...
everything new and pure. To a three year
old's eyes, the sky is always a perfectturquoise, streaked with high crystal
clouds. So beautiful that you want to eat it.How I wished (then) that hot-dogs couldbe that color.
But the dirt under the skin of the world
will eventually infect the dream.
Still, we find our peace... albeit in pieces. Self-Portrait(detail)
The dream of love. An indescribable thing,and yet you can gauge its boundaries. A painting you can never see, framed by elusive
pleasures. Isolated, they are almost meaningless... the cold November air at sunset,
blotted orange by a dying sun. The alkaline sting of a 9-volt battery on your tongue.Holding hands under a denim jacket. The flash of blue-green light behind your eyes at the
point of pleasure. A twelve-string guitar. The scent of warm asphalt on a summer evening.
A whispered Goodnight and Good morning. Chopin. An airplane, humming like alover beneath you...
But best of all is waking up from a beautiful dream, and finding that it is real after all.
That's when, even if you believe in no deity, you want to thank someone higher than
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yourself who mustbe responsible for this. Beatific God, who has made me smile, in spiteof the dirt beneath the world's skin. Finding yourself in someone's eyes is the ultimate
discovery. Ah, Columbus... you needn't have travelled so far.
A pivotal moment in my childhood: seeing a
blind guitar player outside of Woolworth's one
day. I remember his eyes were pupil-less andblood red. He sang hymns in a ragged voice,
and was oblivious to everything around him. I
was terrified, and became nauseous. Thebeauty/frailty/repugnance of humanity has
always been a source of fascination and
repulsion to me.
The fragility of beauty. The threshold we cross
every day, waking from a transitory death and
plodding towards a finality that we usuallyavoid contemplating.
Self-Portrait with Albatross
There's nothing more cathartic than putting together a model car. I'll wager that
assembling a vintage Aurora Wolfman is one of the most peace-inducing pursuits on the
planet. As a semi-serious collector of the aforementioned items (a serious collector being
an individual who has never known womankind in the biblical sense, and passionatelydebates the superiority of the Ghost Rider over the Silver Surfer) I can speak with some
degree of authority.
The first time I stumbled upon this revelation ... well, I must have been about twelve. It
was a cold and rainy Saturday, a grey November day with sleet-like icy needles
scratching at the windows. The kind of comforting cold that loves cake doughnutswarmed in a toaster-oven, and a cup of hot chocolate misting up your eyes. This is what
is known as model-putting-together weather, and I fail to understand why the TV
meteorologists never announce its arrival as such. Anyway, I had recently purchased a
Tom Daniels hot rod called the Groovy Grader, which was an insanely souped-up roadgrader with mag wheels. We have our headache-inducing glue, our enamel paint that
never applies smoothly, and our unfortunate brushes that we forgot to clean last time
around...
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Then, as we are drawn into our work, a strange thing begins to happen. Everything
around begins to fade away. All that seems to exist now are these pieces of plastic, and
seeing that they fit perfectly. Everything else is forgotten. Nothing is, except this. It's astate I've since learned to replicate as I paint. A total absorption in the task at hand. Not
that it's always possible... but when it is, there is no better feeling. To be completely lostin what you are doing, so that even you cease to exist. Blissful, indeed. Existence cansometimes be an irritation.
Anyway, a cold rainy Saturday is and always will be a Groovy Grader day in my
lexicon of days. And here's a hot chocolate toast to the bliss of temporary nothingness.
My first near-death experience occurred on the Ross 10-speed racing bike. Having seen
the surely divine Debbie Addison pass by in the family stationwagon with her mother, I
was pedaling desperately to catch up with them. My intention was to whiz by, the
epitome of coolness, as they sat idling at the traffic light. However, I managed instead todrop the tennis racquet I was carrying into the spokes of the front wheel. Apart from the
amazing sound it made (something akin to dropping a harp and a Caribbean metal drum
into a wood chipper), it flipped me over the handlebars and onto the unforgiving sidewalkof East Broad Street. For a second I could swear I saw a being of light... but it was just an
old guy in white pants asking me if I were okay.
The first TV I remember was a big
black cube, sitting on a tabledesigned to hold its bulk.
Televisions weighed several tonsback then, and within minutes ofbeing turned on got hot enough to
warm a TV dinner. They emitted a
strong electric smell, and their
backs glowed orange from averitable city of tubes inside. More
often than not I was squeezed back
behind it, looking through the airslits into its warm light. It all
seemed magic, contrasting with the
blue-grey light from the front thestatic, rabbit-ears with aluminum
foil, and darkened room. Transmission
The Christmas I grew up with is a strange creation of late twentieth century culture. The
sacred and profane are joined together, opposing yet complementing one another. Likered and green. Christmas was and is (for me) a wonderful mixture of symbols. Manger
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and sleigh, candles and multi-colored lights. The Night Before Christmas, and the secondchapter of St. Luke. The Angels appearing to the shepherds always struck a note of awe
and holy dread in my young soul, as did the time one Christmas Eve that my not very
sober father climbed onto the roof to ring a bell down the chimney... a portent of Santa'sarrival. It was for me a sensation of delicious fear and expectation. It's something that I
retain to this day. And as much as I longed for the orgiastic frenzy of present-opening inthe morning to come, I learned to relish the exquisite moments of poetry that so often arecome and gone before anyone of us takes notice. May we all take notice.
Checking out a Josie & the Pussycats
website (for the cartoon, not the film)I was glancing over the collectibles
page and came across what I initially
thought was a nativity set. For a brief
second I experienced the ephiphanicrush of exotic beauty that I get when
the unexpected crash together inside
the musty supercollider between myears. Alas, I had mis-read vanity set.
All is vanity. Regina Coele Latere (detail)
I remember an ancient early autumn
evening. Cool drizzle caresses theexhaust of a hundred cars. Theparking lot gleams as if it were glass.
Two girls kiss on a dare. Warm
bubblegum breath on my cheek, on
my neck. Hands find my pockets.Turning Japanese on a radio
somewhere, and the Eckerd's Drugs
sign seems to flash in time with thebeat, and I wish that time would stop.
There's a bright light behind the
clouds. I know it's the moon, but Iwonder if it's Jesus... A Secret Song for Sara
An old love, with its ecstasies and agonies, does not die. But its essence will condense
into a bittersweet candy, far back on one of the dusty shelves of your soul. New
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affections, new obsessions will supersede it, but they will never obscure its distantflavour, or its longings.
Once your heart is touched in that peculiar way, it never quite heals. The pain can oftenbe pleasurable, but it is always pain. Unrequited. If it is requited, it isn't what you
expected, and probably not what you wanted. But this disappointment is not the answer.Disappointment is the sister of complacency.
Reality and the ideal can't seem to exist in the same time and space. The gears turn, but
never mesh. That's the dilemma of attempting to live in both worlds. In fact, they are
sworn enemies.
Music whispers of a sweet reality that only exists in the mind of the hearer. To put it
politely, it embroiders on what most consider to be the truth. In songs, I heard the longingthat I felt yet didn't understand. And the most important thing I've learned is that I don't
want to understand it. I can't be as cynical as Tolstoy, who in The Kreutzer Sonata
insinuated that music was a beautiful lie, but then I doubt that he could be either. Eventhough I now know the actuality and the possibilities of certain life situations, I also
know that I cannot live inside the rancid corpse of what many consider reality. With
music, with painting, take what this world offers as reality and do your best to bend and
twist it into a beautiful shape. If it breaks, it cannot be considered a life wasted. Go west,young man... in the sunset lies your heart.
I hear you singing through the wire, I can hear you in the wine...
*Transmission ended*
I tend to submerge allunpleasantness beneath the miles
of permafrost that I've allowed to
accumulate over the years (self-preservation, ya know). There shall
be no clubbing of baby seals in my
arctic preserve. I ask questions, but
I pray that the answers never come.
Bless me with mystery, and
shroud me with shadows...
Originally I was going to weave a
cautionary tale along the lines ofbe careful in whom or what you
invest your time, and yourself...The Pretty Baa Lambs
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but that just sounds far too negative, and I hate being negative. This pitiful world islacquered over with sadness, broken from nearly the beginning. The truth is that you
cannot rely on anyone. Even those who have the best intentions. Even yourself.
So, a misplaced trust is a stone I've stumbled over more than once in my lifetime. Those
who you have come to trust as a friend, even a best friend... why do they suddenlyappear with a knife behind their smile? It's all the more distressing when you know thatyou've done nothing to deserve it. Who knows? Sometimes all you can do is stand in
stark amazement. The world becomes a little less green, a little more grey.
Bitterness is not an option. One can only hope to become wiser. The positive aspect? Youbecome all the more thankful and attentive to the one who truly does love you. Now,
everyone, smile your defiant smile into the grey, unfeeling void... and surely something
will change.
Tonight is the first night of autumn.Not technically, perhaps, but I
usually gauge it by whether I must
close my window during the course
of the evening. My computer beingat the window, my mouse hand
quickly becomes cold. But not
unpleasantly so. All the better tosee the spirits rising from my hot
cup of tea.
So, the crickets are muted tonight.
The writing spider outside mywindow is suddenly gone. And
Scorpius gently slides down A Kiss on Sled Hill
behind the trees in the west...Antares and Shaula glitter above the housetops. Fomalhaut rises, and makes its silent arc
across the southern sky. Autumn is here.
Now for the days of ice-blue skies and winds twisting with red and yellow leaves. Coldstrip malls and warm cars with the radio playing. The smell of wood-smoke, and the
distant sound of children playing. A girl's fuzzy sweater, that smells inexplicably and
wonderfully sweet... traces of her hair, her perfume, and her laughter.
The crickets won't be singing much longer... but there is a family of owls that lives
several trees down from me. There's something very old and comforting about theircalling to one another through the night. Ungainly bird, but most lovely of all birds.
Singing, as the song of the cricket dies away, and the stars of summer sleep behind the
earth. The heavenly season, blue and blazing, has come again.
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On Labor Day the county fair
comes to town. Granted, it's asad shadow of its former glory.
Gone are the days of hyper-dangerous rides, deformed farmanimals, and girlie shows. No
more heavily made-up ladies
swaying tiredly to New Order
or Human League... the veryweight of their make-up
making them weary. No two-
headed baby in a jar, chained toa post like some insane tether
ball. No unfortunate calf with
six legs... just pies, and a Ferriswheel.
But I recall the more
dangerously poetic times.Insane crowds, a thousand
songs playing at once. The
creak and rumble of the rides,and enough flashing lights to
induce a city of seizures.Seeing an old girlfriend for the last time in front of the Arctic Flyer. Only her eyes, over
someone's shoulder. Walking home in the rain with friends, and feeling both happy and
sad.
Earlier still, and a boy of eight was enchanted by a gypsy girl of twelve, who took his
quarters. No matter which duck he chose, it was never the winning one. But that was fine.Her eyes were dark lights, and cut deeply into his heart. She was there every year.
Then, when he was thirteen, it was all unexplainably and suddenly changed. The gypsy
girl was gone. The sad animals were hidden away, the dancing girls danced elsewhere.
But I like to think that somewhere, such a county fair still exists. A microcosm of a mad
world, translated into neon lights and candy apples. Unhealthy food, unwholesomeattractions... all brightly lit, and all nearly within your grasp. Such things can and do
inspire the impressionable and wide-eyed proselyte.
I have a few relics from those days. A clown's head, whose body has long since
disappeared. A golden cross, now brown with age. And a few plastic ducks, whose
numbers are painted on the bottom with red nail polish. I like to imagine that it was hers.
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The same trees surround that field, the same gravel lines the midway, the same eyes lookback on those days... forever gone.
The Silver Apples of the Moon
Do you remember what I never forget? Meeting at dusk on the fairground. The sky a
deepening blue, the songs blaring from the Arctic Flyer. How natural it all seemed, right
from the beginning. Do you remember the sudden cooling of the air as the sundisappeared? That evening breeze that carried with it a thousand scents, from a myriad ofperfumes and foods. From green and yellow fluorescent lights... sawdust and redwood
benches... Pepsi spilled on summer shirts. Dying colognes. My friend Robbie met Selene,
and they ventured off into the night. I met you.
Do you remember my grandparent's basement? The cool stone floor; stacks of
newspapers, and the smell of gasoline. The radio that played Pink Floyd on Sundayafternoons. Listening for approaching footsteps, and yet not hearing them.
Do you remember the week before Christmas? You climbed into my light-lined window,
and burned your stomach slightly on a green bulb. Do you remember the CD you broughtwith you?A Gregorian Christmas. We half-listened as we wholly discovered what really
and truly was. And later, we huddled together under a patchwork quilt, staring wistfully
at the streetlights through the window, as that timeless music spoke to us of a timelesstime.
Do you remember talking on the phone, under the covers? It was never boring; there wasalways more to say than could have been said. Every day, every night.
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Do you remember when your
family moved away, and took you
with them? You couldn't face me,to tell me. But I'll tell you a secret...
I couldn't face you to hear it. So,one day a day unfolded, and youwere not at its center. It seemed an
impossible thing to have happened.
An amazingly hurtful thing, like an
object that is unbearably hot, butwill not allow you to release it.
You left a vapor trail across the
sky... and then you were gone, andthe vapor dissipated... and there
was nothing. Nothing but a
cathedral ofmemories. I am not amonk in this cathedral, but do visit
it tenderly on the darkest nights to La Cathedrale de Strasbourg
blow the cobwebs from the reliquary.
I have a new bishopric now.
Ten scents that should be mass-marketed
1. A redwood bench that has absorbed the noonday sun.
2. A mixture of various fast foods and sawdust (usually found at fairgrounds).
3. New vinyl albums and CDs.
4. Difficult to describe... but the taste/scent of a persimmon on a chilly evening with aslight hint of school-bus exhaust.
5. A girl who has just mown the grass and is wearing sunblock (not with coconut oil,
however).
6. A Firestone store. I remember from childhood huge towers of new tires and shinymetal toy robots...
7. Warm fluorescent lights in the rain (especially those on a Ferris wheel).
8. A denim jacket worn by a girl who has excellent taste in cologne, shampoo, and
bubblegum.
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9. My grandmother's Eastern Star bible, with its multi-colored ribbon bookmarks.
10. Dead leaves.
The day has gone down magnificently. The sun has drifted behind the poplar trees,framing each leaf in orange and coloring the sky a brighter blue than midday, with softtendrils of pink and mauve encroaching around the edges. Nature seems to have paused.
The birds meditate in their nests, and even the passing cars have a hush of reverence upon
them. It indeed seems almost a holy moment. Our star goes to warm the oceans ofmorning behind the world, as her children gently wink in an ever-darkening sea of
twilight. The cicadas are not so shrill now. Perhaps the brightening summer stars have
drawn them into a state of contemplation. That gentle light that reaches us now, likewaves from a distant shore, is but a ghost of what it once was. Vega and Deneb, blue-
white diamonds hanging far above, cast their shadows too dim for our eyes, but the
waking owl will follow them in her ever-widening circle of flight. The air is heavy, yet
not oppressive, rich with the verdant jewels of summer lawns and sprinklers that whispera sweet monotony. From the house, the music of Mendelssohn plays... the organ sonatas,
tracing patterns in the evening of an almost Bachian grace. The music lends an overture
of sacred peace to the moment, and all is overlaid with a feeling of the presence of God.One can glimpse His true nature now, a silent majesty that awakens an intimate voice in
the depths of the heart of creation. One can recognize its echo in the distant sound of
children playing, in the hum of the streetlight as it flickers to life, in the cricket as it singsfrom its home in the deep grass. This oratorio of nature and man is too beautiful to last
more than a few divine moments. Be still and take it in, the poetry that is now at hand, for
all too soon the sky trembles into darkness, and night will come to draw her dark shroud
across our eyes.
It's still warm where you were sitting. A piece of tangerine skin curls around a cup ofwarm tea. Lights on the Christmas tree blink a rhythm that's vaguely familiar to you, and
to me. Changing constellations on a sawdust sea. The milky blackness of your long hair
silhouetted against the light of a sad red candle. Burning, dying away.
The people who are dead ... or maybe you just haven't seen them in a long, long time.That's better. More palatable. A song you hear in the store that brings back a flood of
melancholy memories. Suddenly, you really don't want to be there or anywhere. You
just don't want to be. Well, you may as well exist with me.
The ever-present music was a father to you. It told you things that you had always known,
but never really thought of before. It lent an elegance to every sweet smile. It turned
cardboard to gold.... so when the cardboard finally crumbled, you saw only gold dust.Music, the beautiful lie. It taught you to hate silence above all, and so you do. Still, small
voices wait in the folds of silence. Jealous gods give you dreams of empty cities, where
you are fated to walk and find nothing...
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So, sit for a while. The saddest secret is yet to come. Its herald is written on the wall. Notby the fingers of God, but by the soft shadows of sunlight and leaves flickering there.
Why is it so sad, that dying light? It has always been so... to you. Don't look away. It's
time to look now, and let those wordless shadows take you into their depths. A soft, slowspiral. The clock's hands wave us a sad farewell.
We won't leave this year with glasses full, but with empty tears. Not with the sound ofmerriment, but with the gentle spleck of a parting kiss in the grey waves of morning.
There is pain in the blissful core of even the prettiest star. But still, we are...
And it's still warm where you were sitting.
The words of Danny Malboeuf, edited from his journal entries by Lloyd D. Graham. Dannys drawings are pencil on
paper and his paintings are acrylic on canvas; his art can be seen athttp://kolaboy.deviantart.com/gallery/ and
http://beinart.org/artists/danny-malboeuf/?GID=746 .
http://kolaboy.deviantart.com/gallery/http://beinart.org/artists/danny-malboeuf/?GID=746http://beinart.org/artists/danny-malboeuf/?GID=746http://kolaboy.deviantart.com/gallery/