house of cards

last summer a friend and i were telling stories about growing up in the pre-digital world. i explained summer months in a pin oak tree with a book or a journal, hiding from my brother. he spent his winter months on the living room floor building houses of cards.

i thought that this was super weird and challenged him on the story.
who really sits around doing nothing long enough to build a house of cards?

turns out he did. and was in the guinness book of world records for making one with the most cards, ever. with a 1979 article from the Omaha paper, my friend proved that people really do spend ridiculous amounts of time on meaningless constructs, and the world takes notice.

last night, someone else and i were also telling stories about growing up. i spoke of my pin oak, and he talked his neighborhood on the lake, the freedom of swimming pool baths and no underwear in july.

in this conversation, i added on to the house of cards that i have built. rooms of families and other relationships arranged with such delicate mortar, that they are hard to keep upright in an honest conversation. i made no mention of brazillian voices, hallway pacing, or the squirrel on a fence.

later on his couch, in the fold of a blue silk dress over green corduroy, i got tired of arranging hearts, diamonds and spades in a scaffold that keeps falling. i have wasted too much of what i've been dealt in the neighborhood of "right things to do". too much of these places are done in with one breath. one word. or one squirrel.

i'm quitting card games.
what comes next will be forged from pin oak.
maybe something with a roof to tell secrets on.
and for sure, there's gonna be a fence that i can see over.

i'm chasing that fucking squirrel back into his own yard.