Friday, July 29, 2011

cgs/y still more?/note to self: fire all the investors

brother from the land of the dead speaks about the brother in the land of the still living:

nothing much is different in terms of rhythm and tempo, nothing much at all only in terms of observation of open observation in ability to observe observingly, not objective, not omnipotent, just free to speak of these things more freely.  things such as:

he misses her.  the her is problematic because of reasons one might suspect if one were suspicious of these things (note to self in world of living: one should be suspicious, because although they are useful categories, they need more care, especially at this point in time when there is enough evidence, evidence of the violent kind, that there is a war on, and in wartime, thinking like a warrior means to use care, use caution, and to keep the list of enemies close at hand)...he misses her then problematically her not problematically miss, miss in the sense of longing and grieving, yes that, yes that again, yes that's a good line, yes that's a good line again, longing and grieving are the same same same...her, though, her means so many things, and so many people, and the people all have so many faces and so many identities, he wants her to be this one, the one who moves like olokun on the bottom of the ocean and knows him there...knew him, perhaps, does she remember him? does she still recognize him?  did she go away because she was hearing things from sources inside and outside her own head, sources she didn't necessarily trust, sources that kept telling her that he was speaking about her behind her back, saying bad things behind her back, when nothing could be further from the truth, but they'll soak it up, they'll soak it up, they'll soak it up...but the one who has olokun in her room and sleeps next to olokun, he would write poems to her olokun and try to reach her there somewhere in the bottom of a poem, but it's already done, but he wonders if she thinks about him too much, she must think about him too much, because she's in his thoughts all the time and that's too much it's like grief it's like longing it's like obba missing shango, and he doesn't miss her like that...she another she, these are all she's, it's predictable then, nothing complicated, it's just in his head that they stay she's and he identifies them as she's, and he might be wrong and is probably wrong, it matters, though, it matters very much, matters enough to remove the mark under the light of the moon with a promise to keep some things under the tongue, the best thing about you is something that i will keep secret, our best moments are held under a pocket of muscle around my heart, and if it binds my heartbeat at the end of the day and stops my breath in the night, i will still keep it secret, because the blue light that comes from your body did not slip out so that i could speak of the rainbows from your tongue to the waking world at large, but only so that i could hold them like a communion wafter under my tongue, dissolving under my tongue like you dissolve under my tongue, and i am stuck at the end of another month sending coded messages to you under the cover of this hot morning light...she, this other she, the oil from costa rica coffee beans on the fold of skin at the place where her neck meets ear, gravity pulling the drop to a mouth whose lips are full enough to weave stories of the beginning of the world through her teeth, and a remarkable capacity to become animal and human again with the speed of light on the water, he misses her birth, the way history marks her belly with equal parts europe and a continent whose history is unwritten on the undiscoverable parts of the skin, where no one can reach without a map, he misses her maps...or the worst by far by far is the one who is about to happen the one who is about to fall on his road, something very much like immanence is breathing under the bed and is about to come into the light, and it could be so many things, on the verge of something that is about to happen...but worse still is this sense that the back of his neck is starting to tighten because tomorrow is the time when all this debt will be paid, and he is suddenly aware that it's going to be important, and likely as anything it's going to be less important than he thinks.  because the figures in the story really don't go away, not all the way, and this one who moves like a ghost will speak again, and this one who spoke so well will still remain silent because she can't remember electric hands, and this one who started to hate herself will wake up suddenly at 3:23 and tell herself that what she wants is not possible in this world, in these configurations of skins, and she won't breathe a word of this to anyone.  his belly is growing tight again and his skin is starting to pull to burst open again and there are heads inside his head that want to speak again, about you can't go home again, about this one won't come around again, about this is the first time again and everything again bites again like a word or a heart who's teeth have always been sharp but didn't really glisten in the light until they drew actual blood, and this is blood in a pocket in a mouth and under a pillow for dreams that might hint at a moment that's about to enter a life like a river in the middle of a cave that no one noticed until it was friday, and until it was really, terribly and utterly, before noon, long before noon.  

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

cgs/y the blowfish/wolf, sledgehammer, stutter

this is the difficult part, he starts to think to himself, and he doesn't even realize that he'd thinking this same thought at least 17 times a day, it travels through the bloodstream at 756 megabytes per second, or something impressive like that.  this is the part where you take a breath, and this is the part where you just give in, and every part comes with another breath.  but just like drinking stopped working to take away that initial freezing of the metal lining in the stomach, a few years ago, now smoking is having that same effect, and even with just a few puffs a day, it's not helping and his throat is starting to hurt.

he would like to think that this isn't the difficult part, and that it will get worse, that he's some kind of captive that's being taken in to another realm by forces that will shape him until they can present him to the world as the strongest person who ever suffered.  he would like to think that the throat is hurting from the screaming inside cars with the windows rolled up.  but he doesn't get to spend much time in cars, and if he were screaming in the open the way he thinks he is, he would not necessarily have the same freedoms that he does.  in big cities, people complain when someone is screaming a lot, and no one is complaining here, not yet.  he would also like to think that the reason there is no relief and no release from these things is that this is building in one of those slow movements that end suddenly in death, like the heart was slowly filling up, and that sooner or later is would do what a pot does when it's been boiling for a little too long.  this has got to be something greater than what it is, because everything is always much more than it is, and one can never see the elephant from all sides at once, and we are all blind, or missing fingers, or something important and sad.

it's not as big as it seems, then, and probably not entirely small either, but exactly the size that it is, and the notion that it might actually be what it actually is does bother him a little, and he knows it's a little more than it should, perhaps.

last night he slept with the dog again, a dog that used to be his, in a house that he used to live in.  this has been a strange couple of years, and there are lots of nights in the wrong house.   this house is right, however, but just not for him, at least not for now, and the dog is feeling out of sorts herself, as though she were aware that she were going through something large and heavy.  he slept in the house, not his, with the dog, not his, if that's not too proprietary, after having run his fingers over another 1200 pounds of items that belonged to his older brother.  he put them into boxes and taped the boxes shut.  he recognized some of the items, the books especially, because they used to talk about these.  the shamanism and the jungian analysis and the morbid comedian talking about smoking and drinking.  he also recognized that some of the items were unknowable, small boxes that held a weight that was not for him to understand.  some of the objects belonged to another time, and the other time would sometimes lurk and pace in circles around him while he packed, and occasionally pounced on him when he forgot to keep himself braced.

the dog was with him here, too, in an apartment that was not his, because he felt somehow responsible for the dog's loneliness and suffering.  she looked so very sad and lost, and he wanted to do something to help, even though he was starting to understand that this sadness would go on long past the help, and she might not even feel the relief that he thought he would feel if someone were going to help him.

it's a terrible thing when someone is reflecting and reflected everywhere, and can't even see their own reflections and projections.  that's what he was thinking, without irony, he thought, and thought that was terribly funny.

it was all becoming part of the moment that was leading into a moment that was going to be more difficult than the ones that came before it, placing objects in boxes and trying to make them lie flat and make sense.  this was all going to be difficult and required more and more moments that began with a deep breath.  then the dog, not his, not that anyone can own a dog really, but they were very close, had a tie, the dog, then, the dog, the dog seemed to start to understand that this apartment was in the middle of so many others, and that there were not only other people she really should be meeting because they could very likely help her with her career as a dog, and those people had dogs and cats that could likewise advance her position as a dog in the industry, and this made her suddenly go mad, and bark and make noise that should make her throat hurt the next day, if there were any justice, he thought, without irony.  her barks, then, came from a long line of urgent desires to work something out, a deep need to connect to the things that were close by, and to sever ties with the ones that were starting to hurt her.

her, the dog, not him, had recently been through something that would be considered rather intense to just about anyone, and especially to other dogs who had been through the same thing.  her, or rather, she, she had known some exceptional dogs in her life, and had the opportunity to be touched by these other, exceptional dogs, in ways that would possibly seem painful, or filled with a terrible pleasure that held the very seeds of its opposite hidden in the light of the sun.  dogs know sun, and dogs know when it is sunny, and dogs know when they are sunny, and this sundog was understanding that this was a period of very intense light.  the last thing she went through, the dog, was a greater balance of sun and moon, having been through what might be considered a love affair in the world where they use words like "love" or "affair," (and the dogs do not, not these dogs, they are neither dogs of war nor dogs of love but something entirely both and neither all at once). a greater balance of sun and moon is what it was, but at the time it was all moon, because lovers always think they invent the moon, and perhaps they do, or perhaps that is what the moon is for.  but there was more sun in that, or what might be considered the "male principle" in the realm of the alchemist dogs.

this sunny dog, however, was no alchemist, having recently given up that mantle in order to become more adept in the realm of witchcraft, related, perhaps, but not the same, except that all paths lead to the same thing, one hopes, which is nothing less than the transformation of the self into something like gold. sunny, being sunnier than most, did not adhere to those structures that conceived of principles as feminine or masculine, but so what, so it was, it was just so that the sun and the moon both took their part, and when she was so deeply in love (need to find a better word) with her lover (better word is out there), they would fluctuate between sun and moon with passing breaths and no one could tell who was what, who was the girl dog and who was the boy dog, and who would be everything else in between and outside these terribly regional boundaries.  sun and moon dog trace the four moments of the sun as if they were born under kalunga, and everything has time and direction and force under kalunga, and kalunga under dogs is the same kalunga under anything, one dog nation under nsambi, but dogs in love sometimes do behave automatically, often confused with dogmatically.

automatic dogmatic dogs sing songs to each other long after the sun and the moon have changed places and are no longer blessing their fur under their light, no longer bless their fur because they hide from the sun and the moon, and the dog was feeling somehow terribly absent from herself in this house, in this apartment, under this roof that belonged to too many for too temporary a time with too many demands.  landlords steal the souls or rape the spirits of everyone and everything, capitalist, marxist, or automatic dogmatic fur-lined dog hearts.

all of this to say, he was thinking about projections and reflections and the reasons people avoid thinking about themselves, and about how they might even try to avoid thinking about their own brother if there was enough pain in it, and he was wondering about how some people avoid thinking about the things that they are becoming, where the pattern they don't want to acknowledge is the one they are walking into again, and to know it ahead of time would mean that we are all controlled by instincts and freud and the other daddies were right.  or it might mean something else entirely, something that is only known to the world of the dogs, the ones who can cross back and forth between the realms of the living and the realms of the dead, and carry the secrets back and forth when the sun or the moon is in the right spot for keeping things hidden.  and it might even be possible for someone to look for the thing that was lost from childhood in every lover they meet, and there might be reasons that go past freud or even jung, and have something to do with bloodlines and generations.

he didn't even want to start thinking about a lover who wasn't there, one he hadn't even met yet, but he knew that she would have to have some kind of gypsy blood somewhere, and also have a capacity for sudden transformations in the dark, and also be just like this one, and just like that one, and just like the one he imagined without wanting to imagine her, because to imagine too much ahead of time would make a projection, and the next one who came along with any lover's intentions for him would enter his arms and into his projection at the same time, and they would never meet.

at the same time, he was also sure that he had become a part of someone else's projection, and recently, and often, and it was happening again in other realms, and when it happened it didn't make him run as fast as he thought he might.  under the spell of a projection, he understood, it was entirely possible to play the role that was assigned to him, and play it better than he'd played the role of brother, husband, father, lover, or friend, and perhaps the best projections held more than a little animal nature in them, and that gave him room to become everything he desired.  this was something he wanted to remember, because he wanted to allow this possibility for the next one who came along, or the next one who came back and said they were new, and that becoming animal was becoming entirely exhilarating to consider. because it was possible.  he couldn't find string to tie his finger so he did the next best thing, and pierced his lip through with a ring that didn't quite fit, was a little too large, because this whole needed a mark, this hole needed room, and this white pain would keep him from getting too sentimental about packing up the things that reminded him of who he used to be when his brother was also someone else, and the world was a little more secure because he had someone who could protect him from these things.

the dog was still too lost thinking about her lost lover, and too afraid of the footsteps on the ceiling, to be counted on, and he picked up the things of his brother with his own shoulders, the ones which were no longer large enough to carry the weight of the world, but could stand all the weight of the animals living in between his shoulder blades.  

Monday, July 25, 2011

cgs/y the moops/wet wolf (el lobo excitado)

it's always hard this time of year, he is thinking, whenever this time of year comes around again.  last year was one thing and this year is another one entirely, & he is starting to feel a little too hurried, having already poked his face through with a barrier between this skin and the skin of another, & it's no time to grow morose or nostalgic over anniversaries that should have been one thing and turned into another.  he is wondering about the moments when, having fallen in between a running stream and a wall of dirt (some would call it a ditch), the narrations in his head start to fall down the face and run out his tongue, like his face were a place that could be like a fountain, or a kachina when the maker is possessed.

but this is no time to be speaking of tongues, not here, not now, not like this.  the tongue is silent, the tongue has to be silent about itself, because if he starts to talk about the tongue, he knows, he's going to start saying all sorts of things about her.

it's becoming well known that he simply can't keep a secret, except about the things that are not between anyone else but the people the secrets are about.  it's becoming known that too many people are talking about him, and he needs to get clean.  it's becoming well known that he cleaned himself by alternating between the hot light of the morning and the cool bath of the midnight sky.

and this is when he starts to remember some things that can't possibly come to light, but here they are in the light.  things like: this scar here, the one on the edges of the tongue, comes from the nail used to mark the moment when he saw that his words escaped his mouth and spoke of her, and spoke of the way he drew pictures on her body with his tongue, an evening that was a new ceremony of blessing that played out in a very old pattern; and the saliva dried in a picture that he loved because it reminded him of her; and the things he never wanted to forget about her were growing more numerous the further away she got, and that in this way he started to see how she was becoming absorbed into that pool of things that happened in the past, and part of a long series of exceptions; that the patterns he drew that only she could interpret were seen by other eyes, and the other eyes started to reinterpret with their tongues, and spread the news that he was talking about he behind her back.

enough so that in some times these things would be called distortions of the truth, but here, in the ravine or the ditch, the truth is in process, somewhere between birth and death, on the precipice of both or either or neither.  and his heart is suddenly moving away from the precipice and toward the firmament.  because of this:

the one in the corner, the one who cleans, the one with the broom, the one who is not one, not three, and not tied to the broom, better called they or ones than one, but they/she like to be called the one, because they are attached, because they attach, they, the one who cleans, comes through, she comes through, she who comes through cleaning comes through cleaning, and she comes again to clean.  she announces herself without an announcement, she calls attention to herself with the sounds of her cleaning, she makes herself known through the sounds and the rhythms of the dust that turns and turns and escapes through the window when the storm sucks air in two directions.  she comes to announce without announcing, and it is always the same.  it starts like a request, but there is no request.  she comes to announce that it is the time of year when all the plates and all the floors and all the things that stand between the tongue-eye and the firmament have to be swept away.  clear the area is what she would say if she came announcing with an announcement, but she doesn't come this way because an annunciation means that no one has ever heard her name, and she wouldn't accept that there is anyone who doesn't know her name.  the one in the corner cleans and they say that it's time to clear the area and to get clean in the heat of the sun and the cool of the rain, that the third cycle is about to begin.

this was the saddest part of the story for him so far.  because there was a morning, one that began in a most unusual way, with a wet desert floor and the body of a small animal with a very long tail on the floor at the feet of the cat.  because there was a morning where he started to wake up and started to have a feeling that his thoughts were not yet clear but were coming clear, and that this would be a day that could be guided by clear thought.  and that this was not the first morning like this ever, and that is was coming in a long line of mornings, and that it may have been going on for at least a month.  and the clarity was coming from making decisions about how to keep things away, and how to figure out not to want things, and a realization that this not wanting was starting to turn into a wanting of the things that he had, like they were.  the ceiling was high enough and the floor was low enough and the air was wet enough and the moment was the perfect length of time to count as a moment, and everything else was just decoration, and that this held the secret of some kind of sorcery, or some kind of witchcraft.

he woke up enchanted, and not for the first time.  and the notion that fall would come after summer seemed like the most extraordinary thing in the world.  and everything was about to fall into place.  and something that fell into place would be a three in a series of three, and the three would fall into place and take many things with it, because it would fall with the force of a star denser than the ones aligned at his birth, and make holes where time might peek through and lose its place and sense of direction, being turned around madly, mad like a wolf come in fresh and hungry from the rain.



Friday, July 15, 2011

cgs/y moors/the wolf @ the door

there is a brother.  that's already been established.  there are two, in fact, and it's not a new fact.  already established.  and the one who walks on the surface of the world is walking in grey tones, looking at the world through the eyes of a broken wolf, and the one who is under the surface is seeing the colors that only wolves can see when they've crossed over into the underworld.

this will all shift soon enough to that one, the dead one, who wants to speak about some things that have been bothering him since long before he woke up, and he thinks it might be important to send some messages to the living, and he is apparently of the same bent tongue clan as me, and is practicing painting with his tongue.

but first, a shift to mark on the trunk of this summer, because we are all fourteen and need to telegraph every single turn, he, the first one, not the first first one, has been stuck in the space between the dog and the wolf for the better part of a year now, and hasn't yet noticed that the space has shifted, and the wolf is taken over the area, and walks through the forests of desire at three in the morning, night after night.   it might be him, it might be other, it might be both and more.  there are those who spend their lives becoming tamed, and their stories and journeys are inspiring and often very sweet.  but there are also those who spend their lives in a long process of shifting toward the opposite of taming, and not quite wildness, not the same thing as the unleashed fire of the very young or the very drunk.  there are those who take to taming with the same despondence, or repugnance, of the class that never has any of their affairs in order at the end of their lives, who hold boxes of papers and pots filled with secrets that leave the living puzzled over the strange signs and ciphers of their recently deceased.

he remembers how the girl-boy lover once told him that he became more animal when their was heat running through the veins, when yellow candles burned in closets that couldn't be opened without a tornado or a flood, and he wanted to tell her that she woke this up, it was her and not him that brought it to the surface, because when two animals meet under the light of the moon, there are rarely any good decisions to be made that don't lie in full accord with the urgent shiftings in the pulse.  the pulse is the heartbeat of the world, the first drum, the first song to god.

he wanted to tell her so many things, but so many of their turns left him speechless, all he was left with were words dancing around love, and sometimes dancing in the fire that is love, and sometimes going beyond whatever definitions of love might be running through the fire in the head at the time.  he also wanted to tell her that for him, love is a bell, and is always a bell, and that bell didn't belong to anyone but oshun, who rules the rivers of the body, the pulse is a bell, a cry to wake up the living, to become conscious to the moment, and in the moment, we are all becoming animal.

especially this very moment, and this is the shift, and not entirely comfortable, because her face changed somewhere on a very close side street, and the face he is speaking to at three in the morning isn't the one he remembered from before, but he can't tell her that, not yet, because she doesn't know yet, or if she does, she's not sure what this all is supposed to mean, and is trying to puzzle these things out herself, playing with the same strings in the dark that light up his darkest hours like a firefly.  and the strings are the very same chords that might weave a heart to another heart, or might make a new story, or might be simply a golden thread that's waiting for someone to notice.

but it's terribly hot these days, and sometimes it takes more energy to notice, and sometimes the sheets are already too warm for one body to bear.  best to leave it for the moon to decide, best to leave it for the wolves to reason out on their own, and report back, like a story that comes directly from the land of the dead.

part ii
the brother speaks from the land of the dead

you make me sad, you make my heart spin in new directions like a butterfly, you make me miss the fathers.  there aren't enough fathers in the stories any more, because you're living in a time when no one believes them.  love for the father, from the father, is a door to secrets, but all you can see are the ways some fathers have of inclining packs of people to deny their animal nature and kill like only people know how to kill.  but i learned some things in the seasons i've spent under the ground, and i know your caves, and i know the secrets that are buried there.

i won't tell you anything new, nothing you don't already know, but i'll tell you in a way that might be like a song, so you will listen to the song you forgot.

nothing makes the dead laugh more than hearing all the complicated ways you have of talking about fucking, so that you don't think that you're just talking about fucking.  nothing makes the dead cry more than waiting for you to recognize the spark of your real nature, and watching you try to figure out new ways to put it out.

grief is the fuel of the fire that burns your veins to wake you up in the morning, and forgetting is the sand on the fire.  some of you love as if you're still trying to grow up, where each lover is something to get over so that the experience can live somewhere in the part of the belly that carries bitterness; some of you love as if every new lover has the potential to carve their name on your ribs while you're sleeping.  maybe you should choose a little bit better, because they indeed do have the potential, and these are your ribs, and you have to walk with them, and they will be the bones you turn in the dark when you are awake in this very curious dream.

if i had the chance to live in a body until i was shaped like yours, i would like to think i would do it differently, but we know you well enough to know that we would always do the same things.  that lover that you told too much, the one who could suck out your secrets with her tongue, she is written on the walls of time long before you or her were born.  that lover you were afraid of, the one who made your tongue dumb, is written on the same walls.  nothing changes the things that are written except for the times when lovers speak their love to each other, and that's when a new story begins, and a new series of threads start to explode from the mouths of the worms who live here.  the ones who eat the dead are also the ones who write the footsteps of the living, and the raw matter is all the same.

another secret.  this raw matter is never base, although it might be called that, there is nothing ordinary about the cells that make up the burning in the skin that knows longing.  longing is where stories come from, any story worth telling, and any other story will bore me back to the grave.

so i won't stop to hear any war tales that are not based on longing, and i won't listen to tales that move for the love of money or power, because they are the ones that remind us in the end we are all skeletons, and we already know that.

and so do you.

longing is the key, longing is the doorway to a long road, longing is the reason you're here, and you all cry and cry and cry because longing is so long and the night is so dark, and you wonder why you are here, and if we tell you that you are here for longing, it will be up to you to figure out what to do with that....
(cont'd.)

Thursday, July 7, 2011

firma #1/series 4


‎"cafe c/kalunga"
firma to wake up the eye of the heart after a storm/firma para abrir los ojos, y hacer el corazon disponible despues de un haboob
from "biology is magic, nature is messy, firma series four"
media: cascarilla, espresso, thumb, cell phone
--from phx/lola's, july 7, 2011

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

cgs (y mas)

she could learn a lot from the dead.  or they could learn a lot from her.  the dead, who have already crossed over to that other point of crossing, are also in an in-between state, and are much more amenable toward helping the living who are in the version of that over on this side of that.

cgs (more)

part i (cont'd,)

she also said "lol," and that's sort of important.  he's never been entirely clear why, but it's always been important.  either he said it, or his friends said it, that if you're deciding to sleep with someone, their saying "lol," can really seal the deal into that category of "no."  he is entirely sure he has a category of "no," and she would fall cleanly into that, although in categorical form it was not an imperative, but that's only in the physical plane, in that realm of materiality that is so terribly fleeting.  in other words, in the ideal, he would never consider it, but this is not an ideal place, and in this broken paradise, he would make an exception, and he sometimes enjoys thinking about how this was so begrudging to him when, in truth, she was exceptionally capable of holding a place for him that should rightfully be reserved for a goddess.

this isn't metaphorical, or from too much robert graves (do people read him anymore? does anyone remember him anymore?), these goddesses are really real, or rather, really there, in an ideal and material place for him, not necessarily by choice.  he heard muses a long time ago, and started to listen, and then he knocked, and they answered, and when the door was open, to let the room breathe, the ocean took over, and seafoam covered everything that was once just a poem.  she was like a poem, but she was also made of something that could be contained by skin.  not entirely contained.  too hard to forget about that.  fissures and expenditures always make it possible for time to enter through the bloodstream, and demand nothing less than deep and rapid breaths, and a heart that would find its voice somewhere in the middle of the night when no one else is awake but the lovers and the dead ones.

this isn't anything any more than a secret thought that he isn't able to keep very long, held in the crease of an unbroken tongue, the thought that he always wanted to learn how to dance the tango, and considered himself to be much too arrhythmic to even try, but on some nights with her, it almost felt like they could do it, and it was almost like they didn't even have to try, and the quickening breath happened often enough and easily enough that it was like the laughter of children.  that it fell like anything falls, that it was as easy as gravity, and it was also easy enough that it was very clear to see that it was falling as far as anything could fall, and that it might hurt when it finally hit something  that might be part of the magic of blood.  eventually the bodies will fall until someone breaks, gets pregnant, or steals something.

this isn't anything less than a story about gravity, and it begins with a near-conception, and ends with the sound that bones make when they hit the ground.  but everything that's essential, the sticky and the sweet parts, are deep in the middle.

and the most interesting part by far is one of the few scenes with a physical description so far.  there is a woman with brown eyes in an irish green shirt, and there's too many cell phones in this cafe to hear anything but the sound of something bright happening between paragraphs, but it all fades so quickly into the morning that he doesn't even stop to think about how his orange shirt is perfect for her, that they could make ireland together, only he is not comfortable being orange, but that's too political suddenly and uncomfortably.

his friend takes photographs of him curled up in a praying buddha pose,  then he takes a picture of him staring into the lens, his fingers a "v" and his tongue in between them.  this is the picture he wants to represent him for awhile, because he wants to be a bad boy, or wants to be seen as a bad boy, or maybe it's just because it's hot now and being a bad boy is all he can think of, because in the heat, everyone has run out of ideas.  it's a little alarming then, when, her picture, he sees her picture, suddenly and uncomfortably, with her fingers and tongue in the same position, and she is a remarkably handsome bad boy, enough so that he kind of wishes suddenly that she were his older brother, but she is too young for that.  unless he were born on a leap day, which is still possible.

there is a lot in this that has to fall in and out of the realms of the impossible or not.  before he knew where his brother was buried, it was one story, before he knew exactly the spot, it was another story, and before the bones in the dirt began to speak, it was a possibility that existed in his head as a series of limitless possibilities.

everyone, perhaps, is more comfortable with the idea of limitless possibilities than we might like to think.  when they fall into the realm of definitions, that's when they become something else, and usually disappointing.

"why am i so important?" she was saying once, crying once.

he didn't know how to answer, because it was not a very good day for answering anything.  in the first place, he had recently begun to learn that all of his sins were committed at the edges of his tongue, and never in the dark, and always in the light.  he decided recently that he wouldn't speak about her, not to anyone, because it was becoming clear that anyone was not willing to keep things between anyone, and that anyone was speaking about him as much as anyone was speaking about her, and anyone was hiding their intentions, and the whole thing felt spooky at best, and somehow very republican.

so he couldn't even answer her, because he wasn't talking about her, not even to her, but now he understood that if he could answer, it would be something like: because whenever she fell into the realm of definition or determining becoming, it was always as an in-between, and this in-between was not only a space that he loved, but that this space held a human being that he also loved, and would never understand, and that, in this way, she reminded him of him, only slightly different, like a brother or a perfect lover or something in between.

(cont'd.)

Monday, July 4, 2011

a complicated gender situation

part i

first, not because it has to be heteronormative to begin, but just because the first moment should be a conception, or a near-conception, or something that was conceived without too much thought (if we are lucky, we are also conceived without too much thought)  ((lucky because the elements that burn at the moment when the chemicals begin to turn are better burnt when they are falling with gravity, gravity being the essence of the arrow in the air, falling through the sky in any direction, we are lucky if we are conceived in forgetting, because that capacity will be useful later on))  (((this is trying to sound like an alchemical treatise)))   ((((need to start over))))  it, this, first, begins when he is trying to pull out, and she screams, "no!" and holds him inside.  the walls shake and everything begins to crack open from the center of their worlds.

part ii

she didn't get pregnant, and neither did he.  this is important, because it's not about gender at all, because biology plays a role, a bigger role than i might have once suspected.  by biology i am thinking of something that's problematic, because i am not sure if i am using the right words that will make the right theorists happy with my right words, so if i say words like "problematic," it might buy me credibility when i don't deserve any.  she did not get pregnant.  neither did he.  except they both inseminated each other in some significant way, or whatever it is in its reverse, the opposite of something small inserted into something larger than itself, something that encompasses and takes in, in a way that makes for a kind of permanent haunting of the heart.  that sounded good to him, a permanent haunting of his heart, he wanted to be haunted by her.  she was a child of oya, and he had yewa for a mother, and it seemed right that they would be performing fertility rites so close to the graveyard and the grave.

he found himself, a year later, waking up, and turning to her beside him, and saying, "at its core, this is all a fertility rite, this religion is a fertility religion, every earth religion is about fertility, and that means that anything that we do to make more of our matter, we are blessed and consecrated with permission to enter the room of the forest.  and anything we do to stop matter from growing, or dying, we are faced with more problems than we could have imagined."  except, she was not beside him, because it was a year later, precisely to the day.  give or take a day or two.

he wakes up and remembers that she is not there, and he is still talking to her as if she were there, and he is not there himself, and he is talking to himself as if he were there, listening.  perhaps there could be a brother that hears him like this, and is nodding, and this is not about gender, but he really prefers the company of women to men.

without making too much of anything that's merely physical (aka, "what's the matter?"  the matter is always something for the mother, or is the mother, or we are all the mother when there is something that needs to come into the room, or we are all the father when we are drunk and feeling sorry for ourselves and our bodies are hurt from being too long in the world--ps it's never too long, we are always shorter than we think we are, just like life), there were moments when she reminded him of the brother he never had.

she was an older sister, and if he looked hard enough he might recognize that he was always drawn to older sisters, there was something magnetic there that pulled out the pubic hair filaments of the terror of seventh grade, and made the dorky masturbating teenager that we all still are feel a little better about the way the body started erupting with so many complicated liquids.  he thinks this might not be terribly healthy.  he forgets that nothing is terribly healthy or unhealthy, but only that if it moves toward life or death, it is in line with nature, and if it is toward absence or indifference, then it is difficult.

she was an older sister.  there were moments when, sometime before or after (but never during) the long elastic tango of skin trying so hard to press against itself that it might break, she would speak in a way that only older sisters do, with advice or observations that seemed so simple but took so much raw experience, that he wished he had a brother who could have spoken to him like that.  it might have helped.  it might have made this so much easier.

he does have a brother.  that's important.  and this brother does have advice, and is very sure that the old girlfriends from seventh grade are still hurting him from their perfect yards in perfect neighborhoods, and the first pain originated when the dog thought that being with two dogs at once was an interesting idea.

he, not the brother, but the one with the brother, but not the brother who is like the sister of the woman in this story so far (the one who is there in his bed like a ghost on the anniversary of something he wants to forget), did not realize how much this idea from growing up infected him, the idea that monogamy was natural and anything else was akin to murder.  it took the better part of a year to understand how much this idea had infected him, but once he saw it and where it came from, it became like the reverse of a photo on paper, the image taking itself out of the gloss, and he was left pure white and reflecting.  that is to say, in a much shorter version, he was not naturally jealous, but learned it, and he learned to be ready to learn something else.

part iii

there is a brother that is already buried, and this will bring everything together.  the loss and the grieving of everyone who comes and goes reflects back to these bones, and he thought they were gone forever, and the grieving was always already.  but that changed, and when it changed, the world started to rain, and it did not stop, because corn that should have grown a long time ago was just starting to grow, and this does have something to do with you, something to do with wanting to love you harder, because when you say harder it makes everything come true, literally and metaphorically, and in every kind of meter.  harder.

(cont'd.)

Friday, July 1, 2011

good friday

there's nothing in the way to prevent a clear shot between this realm and the next one.  it's a new landscape, inner and outer, and the view outside the door is a wall and another wall straight ahead, but a straight shot in either direction north and south.  this is the kind of view that can make worlds open up, or change the eye just enough to get it out of itself and into something more connected.

it's sort of all right that everything got so very calm, and no one comes pounding on the door, and there's only the faint sound of a crazy woman laughing.  she does that at least three times an evening, and it's not worth wondering over for too long.  people have interesting tastes.

the nights are not cold, the room is not cold, and the sweat seems to get into the cracks already.  things happen here in these buildings, and in this city, and today i feel like i'm a part of that.  this is where i live right now.  everyone complains about extremes, but everything is extreme, and there's always a break when a friend starts sending messages after midnight, and this place is connected to so many other places, and faces that still haven't changed their area code, even though they've been away from here for awhile.

this is the rough part of the year for us.

that feeling of losing everything and starting over started to lose its thrill after the second shed in the middle of a very heated day, and i was starting to see that it was possible it would be a move where i discover that i've taken everything i don't want with me, and i'll be stuck living in that.

it's hot here, but i can see the weight of the years on some of these objects, not the kind that makes me want to wish i had not done the things i did, but the kind that takes energy from another life, another pair of hands to hold them and make discoveries from the patterns they make visible.  my body is a patten, my thoughts are a pattern, and the things that happened in the course of a year make a pattern, and i don't have to understand it all right now.

but this is where things start to become more important than a feeling.  there's a brother, one i never met, one who didn't live very long, and i knew he was somewhere close by.  so when i'm talking to my mother after watching my daughter and her grandaughter dance divinely hiphoppy hippily gyrating hipness, my mother mentions that we are close to the place where she first moved her with my dad, and the place where they made, birthed, and lost my brother.

it's always been too much to talk about, because it still hurts after all this time, and i don't want to press it when it's seemed too tender, but this was a good night for it.  cats opened up doors, and cats know things, and this cat had the pulse of its paw on something we needed.

in the middle of a parking lot by the hospital, then, i find myself getting out of the car and putting dirt into a bag, and i remember something about memory and blood and ancestors, and i eat some of the dirt, trying to suck it down fast enough so that my daughter doesn't see me with dirt on my chin.  this would be too much to explain after a dance concert.

this daughter sees spirits, or knows when they're around, she's got something, all right, she'll be very good at this some day.  it might be sooner than later.

and on the drive to a yogurt shop where everyone is pretty and pretty much starving to death, i think i hear this brother telling me about things that i wish he could have told me when he still had flesh on his bones.  but bones can speak louder than flesh, so i don't write it off as something i want to make up.  but i can't help but wonder what it would have been like to have two, and if he could have walked my other brother through some things that would have made his road a little less tormented.

the dead brother seems to agree, that this is a very good question.  and maybe, just maybe, if i have to keep living in this body where my stomach doesn't take anything easy, and experiences pain vicariously, because it loves pain apparently, just maybe i could cry with this brother when there's no one else to cry to.

MANIFESTO OF CROSSED ONTOLOGIES Everybody (and by everybody I don ’ t mean everybody I think I mean one person, and I mean you, in par...