Cincinnati

Puma's house was falling down the street. Ryan could only be in for a small amount of time before he got vertigo. We laid on our backs in the kitchen to see if our inner ears could detect the slope, if the blood in our head and limbs would be pulled the way it did when we'd lay on the slope of the earth. Placing an empty bottle on the floor we watched it roll without suggestion, towards the bathroom, towards Megan's room where Bailey the pitt bull peeked around the corner, nervous at new guests. 

From Puma's window, three and half flights up, out the window, I looked out at the drop. 

"One day the whole house is going to slide off its foundation into the street," Ryan told me. Puma's bed near the window on the top floor would be the first out. I told Puma to tether himself to the wall on the opposite side of the room in case it happened. 

I heard the other day of a failed suicide attempt from a three story building. Whoever it was, jumped, got back up, and jumped again. Glancing at Puma, the cornfed Ohio boy, with stronger tethers to family then he might a rope to a wall, would land gracefully on his mother's prayers alone. 

The buildings in Cincinnati are tall and thin, willowy like geriatric ballet dancers. Sometimes I think, so much of what is holding it all together is faith. I know this is silly. There are things in between, beams and balance 

In the Bill Nye, Ken Ham debate the sacredness of faith was utterly lost. Bill Nye on the science side, Ken Ham defending Creationism. It's silly to draw conclusions from absolute truth, but faith itself is not silly. If faith is not intended to grow it is a poison. 

Time has been moving softly and quickly ever since the solstice. Like Rip Van Winkle, I feel like I could wake up one morning and see myself a hundred years older in the bathroom mirror and wonder where the time went. Sleeping, waking, reading - I look up from my painting and see three hours has passed. How was it so? Little mysteries revealed in the time, not the shaking revelations that come with effort. They amount to the same satisfaction within myself. ]