Barry Cavin Barry Cavin

ghost memories

Memories are sloppy ghosts.

I remember wanting to vacation in Florida when I was a child. I don’t know why. Was it the postcards I’d seen in the antique stores? My parents did take me once, or was it twice, it was never enough, and it wasn’t like the postcards. Those old cards were sad to me. They represented something wished for but never really existed in the first place. “Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real… It is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology) but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real...” ― Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation

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Barry Cavin Barry Cavin

recycled

All the water that ever was is all we’ll ever have. Unless, of course, we get hit by a giant asteroid.

Dinosaurs drank it, Neanderthals pissed it away. Shakespeare had his sips, then Napolean urinated on the battlefield. Mary Shelly took a giant swig, and Elvis peed it down the pot. The water we drink has gone through a lot. In 1897 Richard Emile Resler might have taken a picture of the waters off  West Palm and wondered these same thoughts. Water is history.

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Barry Cavin Barry Cavin

grains

Fog is quiet and full of potential. Something emerges or it does not. The trick is to listen deeply, to see deeply, beyond what our natural senses tell us. Nearby, an invisible ship sounds its horn long and low. That figure approaching, what does it want?

“Grain upon grain, one by one, and one day, suddenly, there's a heap, a little heap, the impossible heap.” — Endgame by Samuel Beckett.

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Barry Cavin Barry Cavin

a blur

It’s all a blur.

It happened so fast it was in slow motion. There was movement. All I remember was the movement. Plant life sweeping my face as I ran. My head moving, looking back, nothing yet, but soon, soon they would catch up. I love the forest but it can hold its own terrors.

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