## Dyptich

https://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/post/96261999250/exulansis --- a diptych addresses this

### What memory or lived experience does [this postcard](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1046169497045843999/1124045555794976999/IMG_20230629_130948.jpg) trigger?

Long days on long roads, learning to drive with my dad yelling every time the wheels of the truck touched snow --- "It'll pull the car off the road if you're not careful" --- before settling back into muttering --- "fucking dumbass".

A Christmas-birthday trip to Steamboat Springs for skiing, the last before my dad and Julie divorced, him drinking tequila upon tequila upon beer upon tequila to forget about the pain in his shoulder or whatever fraught relationship had kicked up at work.

A carefully uncluttered condominium.

Flipping the switch to turn on the gas fireplace, a heat somehow more plastic than what we might feel from wood.

Finishing "The Two Towers" on DVD alone in the hot dark while my dad and Julie argued quietly two rooms over, Emiliana Torrini crooning, "Where once was light, now darkness falls. Where once was love, love is no more."

### What forms of diptych have you seen outside of visual art?

* The Unanswered Question
* The fourth wall
* Soundtracks (mixed media, the hinge being how the audio and video are related
* Magazines with full-page ads

### How can this tension be brought into writing?

* *ally*
* *Florilegium*
* Shape poetry, viz Angie's poem about Xanax
* The romance caduceus

### Write a myth that originates in your community or family

The day that Matthew died, he poured himself a glass of gin, tossed in two ice cubes, splashed in some Lillet, and sat at his desk to, for the million billion trillionth night in a row, talk with the family he had built up around himself, one more sturdy than the one he'd been assigned at birth.

```
Koray arrives from the foyer.
Koray murmurs, "Margaras would come here, yes?"
Kuttas says, "Possible. Who's asking?"
Koray murmurs, "A bearer of bad news"
Kuttas doesn't like the sound of that.
Kuttas says, "What happened?"
Koray murmurs, "http://www.obitmichigan.com/Obituary/13660/Ryan-Abbott"
Koray murmurs, "Which is him, I believe"
Kuttas says, "Fuck."
MegaWolf blinks.
Paladin barks, "It does look like him, without the glasses."
Koray murmurs, "Sorry... I didn't mean to bring ya down"
Koray murmurs, "I just thought you should all know"
Kuttas says, "Thank you."
Vetiver blinks.
Vetiver quorks, "Gotta be kidding me."
Koray nods. "Also, http://www.furaffinity.net/user/margaras/ if you wanna say anything."
Srass says, "HOw did it happen?"
Koray waves.
MegaWolf -.- http://www.fox17online.com/news/fox17-ryan-abbott-soldier-from-grand-rapids-dies-in-washington-20120911,0,6686609.story
Koray teleports away.
Koray has left.
```

There was no gasp, no immediate stream of tears. Breathing remained carefully paced for five, ten, perhaps thirty minutes. It was not a meditation. It was not a contemplation. It was a refusal to change.

He stood from his seat, picked up his glass of watered-down Beefeaters, and walked into his husband's room --- his husband, who had to leave for work at 4:45 that morning, perhaps five hours off --- and sat down on the edge of the bed, and only then did he cry.

He cried down into his glass, salted his drink with tears, sniffled grossly, apologized and apologized and apologized for waking his husband up, let his husband rub his back and murmur sleepy consolations.

They talked, then, for perhaps twenty minutes. That name was spoken dozens of times, cherished for these last few decade before it falls out of our mouths forever. He said his goodnights, his I-love-yous, finished the last swallow of his drink --- now more water than alcohol --- and stood again to lay down in his own bed and die.

### What would happen if the first and last exercises were read together as a diptych? Re-imagine them as such.

Long days on long roads, learning to drive with my dad yelling every time the wheels of the truck touched snow --- "It'll pull the car off the road if you're not careful" --- before settling back into muttering --- "fucking dumbass".

A Christmas-birthday trip to Steamboat Springs for skiing, the last before my dad and Julie divorced, him drinking tequila upon tequila upon beer upon tequila to forget about the pain in his shoulder or whatever fraught relationship had kicked up at work.

A carefully uncluttered condominium.

Flipping the switch to turn on the gas fireplace, a heat somehow more plastic than what we might feel from wood.

Finishing "The Two Towers" on DVD alone in the hot dark while my dad and Julie argued quietly two rooms over, Emiliana Torrini crooning, "Where once was light, now darkness falls. Where once was love, love is no more."

There were always a few too many drinks, a few too many empty cans cluttering the recycle bin, piled into those bags that we, Julie and I, would take to the can recycler to feed into that disgusting conveyor and collect our twenty dollars. Even up until the end, up until the last days of their relationship, we would spend silent drives together, hauling bags of clanking Tecate cans in black plastic bags to the automated recycler down the road. I'd watch her fume as she hauled the bags out to me so that I could feed the machine --- the dirtier of the two jobs --- and wonder why she and my dad had stopped talking so much.

Drunken nights, drunken days, drunken nights, and I grew further away form them. I got my license, yes. I got into choir, I built up my group of friends, I lived away from my dad and her, and I went to college

I went to college and, that first day back, I came home to find only her. My dad had moved and never given me his address. 

I found only her, sitting with a mostly empty bottle of vodka and a mostly empty pack of cigarettes crying in front of a stuffed rat, a little toy built to look disgusting, with a bandana around its neck that said 'RAT BASTURD'. "Your fucking dad, your fucking dad," she sobbed, picking up the rat and feebly whacking it against the coffee table. "Your fucking dad, your fucking dad..."

The day that Matthew died, he poured himself a glass of gin, tossed in two ice cubes, splashed in some Lillet, and sat at his desk to, for the million billion trillionth night in a row, talk with the family he had built up around himself, one more sturdy than the one he'd been assigned at birth.

```
Koray arrives from the foyer.
Koray murmurs, "Margaras would come here, yes?"
Kuttas says, "Possible. Who's asking?"
Koray murmurs, "A bearer of bad news"
Kuttas doesn't like the sound of that.
Kuttas says, "What happened?"
Koray murmurs, "http://www.obitmichigan.com/Obituary/13660/Ryan-Abbott"
Koray murmurs, "Which is him, I believe"
Kuttas says, "Fuck."
MegaWolf blinks.
Paladin barks, "It does look like him, without the glasses."
Koray murmurs, "Sorry... I didn't mean to bring ya down"
Koray murmurs, "I just thought you should all know"
Kuttas says, "Thank you."
Vetiver blinks.
Vetiver quorks, "Gotta be kidding me."
Koray nods. "Also, http://www.furaffinity.net/user/margaras/ if you wanna say anything."
Srass says, "HOw did it happen?"
Koray waves.
MegaWolf -.- http://www.fox17online.com/news/fox17-ryan-abbott-soldier-from-grand-rapids-dies-in-washington-20120911,0,6686609.story
Koray teleports away.
Koray has left.
```

There was no gasp, no immediate stream of tears. Breathing remained carefully paced for five, ten, perhaps thirty minutes. It was not a meditation. It was not a contemplation. It was a refusal to change.

He stood from his seat, picked up his glass of watered-down Beefeaters, and walked into his husband's room --- his husband, who had to leave for work at 4:45 that morning, perhaps five hours off --- and sat down on the edge of the bed, and only then did he cry.

He cried down into his glass, salted his drink with tears, sniffled grossly, apologized and apologized and apologized for waking his husband up, let his husband rub his back and murmur sleepy consolations.

They talked, then, for perhaps twenty minutes. That name was spoken dozens of times, cherished for these last few decade before it falls out of our mouths forever. He said his goodnights, his I-love-yous, finished the last swallow of his drink --- now more water than alcohol --- and stood again to lay down in his own bed and die.

And there in the past, there in Steamboat Springs, Matthew sat alone on the floor in front of the TV, fifteen and change, watching the end of "The Two Towers" while some ill-defined relationship between the ill-defined entities of Ron and Julie died a quiet death.
