text: My father sat there, in his chair, his chair, no one else’s, that’s the way it was; it remained his chair even when he was 6ft to deep to sit in it, in the attic of the house, never given away, never thrown out, and old blanket draped over it - never spoken of. The film played over and over again, I forget which film. We had one of those weird players with a setting that could play a film on a loop, a function no normal person would ever use, designed perhaps for shut-ins, depressives, the elderly, the medicated: both prescription and non-prescription. I don’t know how many times I saw that film, it was just colors and sounds to me, so in reality everything was just waves, that’s the way I’ve been looking at the world recently, it’s all just waves, altering in their minute details: wavelength, amplitude, frequency. The sound waves tingling the hairs in my one year old ear, daring me to make sense of them, the ocular cone and rods, flared up as the colors danced, I could tell there were people, there were places, there were things, but I had nothing to compare them to. Was this man on the screen my father, at that age all adult men are your father, whereas you only have one mother, completely unique, right from the get go that bond seems stronger. My crib had bars taller than me, but of course, if they hadn’t been they would have defeated their own purpose. I peeked through them, eager to learn of the world, looking like a prisoner, but not having any conception of what a prison is. Though I soon would. I watched my father, his chest rising and falling, the cigarette in his fingers, unlit; this would happen occasionally, the intention was there but, as so often in life, the follow-through was not. Sometimes he would make the cigarette dance for me, some of my earliest memories, vivid trees, skies, cars, people, and then suddenly a shooting star darting from my periphery. I reached at it and it would pull back, trailing smoke behind it which turned the vivid memories hazy. His eyes were closed, I did have a concept of sleep, he was asleep, his chest up and down. I parodied it, even at that age having a desire to copy and impress - a lonely artfrom. Dating advice #21: copy your partners posture and mannerisms, this will make you seem compatible. (If she puts her hand in the fire, you know damn well where yours is going). So there I lay, on my back, breathing as hard as I possibly could, but the up-down of my chest, its plotted height resulting in a sin curve, could no where near match the heights reached by my barrel chested father. Years of lifting things and moving things, there was never talk of his actual job title, it was just well known that it required physical excursion. Perhaps his explanation for returning home every night, his breathing pale, his face a rosy red: ‘long day’ those are the only two words I remember him saying.