Saturday, April 16, 2011

dog of the dead

This is a little tricky.  I'm thinking that these things are always a little tricky, especially now, when there are film reels moving around in my head, and they contain images and words that matter.  Or at least used to matter.  This is something that started in January, when I was told by spirits (who sometimes get things wrong, or tell me things that are not true because they think they are true or should be true) that I would need to clear the area because something big was coming, and it would take my breath away and make things that happened then look like games played between children in the dark, or by the water.  They were right.  But to go back (in a sentence, or in time, or somewhere back somewhere), these scenes are placed in a metaphorical realm between one love and another, a dead time, dog days of love.

Which is a big word, and is as daunting in one language as it is in another, and these days is so much more difficult to imagine beyond the spinning webs of history, the serpents that eat the ribs of the living and inscribe on us until we become the bones the next generations wonder about.  It's a word that's tricky, and I'm thinking about this word while I'm driving to the grocery store to get snacks for my little girl, who will not be able to stay awake until I get back, but I'm hungry, and want to be driving right now.

This started in January, a liminal period between one thing and another, and if love is not the right word it might have to do, because it might be like god, most people know what it sort of means, even if we don't agree.  If we have to speak English, however, then we should probably be very precise, because that's what this vehicle can do, so there might be a word for this that's better than love, but suffice to say there's this sense that has happened before, and looks that I've seen before, and either way there are suddenly there are more fragile things in my room than before, and they make me pay more attention to the small movements of my hands.

But this keeps getting away, it started in January, because I was interested in the idea of how premonitions about lovers could be taken as warnings, or could be taken as promises, and especially interested in how no matter how they were taken, the taking would be wrong, and things would not be what they seem, and people might decide to go ahead and jump into the river anyway, because.

Do I need to explain the because?  (I won't).

So this is why tonight, I realize I have to be careful, because suddenly I am, like so many others, dead and alive all at once.  I'm thinking of a thousand perfect moments, and also one particular point (maybe two) ((it could be three)) when it seemed like it would be good to get these birds out of my throat, but as soon as they started to fly I could see that it was not a good idea, and not even particularly true, they were just uncomfortable, and I thought I didn't want to live with them, not because they were painful, but because they couldn't decide to fly out or to submerge themselves where they came from.  But that sore healed, and that scar will not be so big, I don't think, that it would raise when the temperature shifts again.  And it did shift again.

This was supposed to be a film about a time in between, so that I would have something to carry with me, but then the person that my ancestors told me I would meet showed up, and I had to leave the cave, or the middle of the forest, and start out on an adventure at sea.  Which is a place to get lost, sure, but it also has a certain charm that makes it easy for people to think they are lost, when in fact the mermaids are really guiding them toward the things they need to see and be next.  So I came back from the dead too soon, and not quite alive I am making work that is about this feeling instead of the one I started out with, and that's not going to be a problem, because this is more true than that.  However, the hard part comes when the dog enters into the scene, zombies on the floor making patterns on the living, and I say something about how the dog is already zombie, because all dogs are always already zombie.

This is a joke that only you would get, and so I'm making jokes to you when you are not here.  Or here and not here.  And it doesn't have to mean anything, but feels true enough that it is certainly right, and my heart is full and not as anxious as it used to be, but it does murmur now, and that's also true enough to be right.  But when I'm paying at the store, the woman is being terribly nice, and then she gasps and tells me that I'm bleeding.  I tell her, no, I'm not bleeding, I'm a zombie, it's not my blood, it's someone else's.

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