references

This is one of those days where there is an endless stream of work.  It starts right when there is no more bed around me, and I'm brushing and scrubbing things and wishing I could remember what I just dreamed about.  It doesn't come back.  There were sea monsters and dogs and someone was trying to tell me something from far away and it doesn't come back.  And then there is an endless stream of work.  And it doesn't even occur to me until the very end, when I'm rubbing my cheek and remembering how it felt like there was a bee there, and that wouldn't make any sense, not with a day that ended like this one where there was nothing to mull over, and no hidden agendas to report.  And there were no impossible desires, unless I look closer, and it could start to look like a day of impossible desires, so I decide not to look.  It should have been a day of cafe writing, trying to decode which ones were supermodels with appointments, which ones were there from time off from their day jobs because of the holidays, and which ones were there to think about alchemy and the moon.  (No one ever comes there to think about alchemy and the moon, or we would certainly recognize the moon on each other's shoulders and recognize the sea monsters coming out of our mouths, and of course we don't)  ((This is the time of year when everyone is wondering who they will kiss at the new year, and I can't wonder because I understand that what I want is impossible, even though it might be easier than breathing, but it's hard to breathe during the dead days))  So I am instead surrounded by older men who work in the back yard of an ex's house while I keep her dog company and work on the endless stream of work.  I am putting together words for money, and it is turning out to be just enough.  Enough so that I could buy the perfect pair of badass boots, if I could find them, but I can't.  To be relentless like the water, and to be able to move around things like water, and to adapt to surfaces and temperatures like water, this is what I see for a year ahead.  I also see a figure just up ahead, someone I can't quite make out, like someone from a dream that I can't remember, and I might know who she is, but I might be wrong, so I decide not to be right or wrong about anything.  And there are older men in the back yard who are telling me about water tables and water management and I am listening instead of getting angry and telling them that they cannot control the water, it is relentless, and it's good that I don't speak because it wouldn't turn out the way any of us wants.  And there is a big cop motorcycle that I am driving because no one knows what's wrong with my real bike but until they do, this is what I am on.  And I move through the streets like I am water.  And I watch Ally Sheedy go down on the blond girl who means well, and they're talking about art and heroin, and it's enough to make me remember that these are things that I would take with me if I could, and I can, because I am becoming water, and I take everything with me in my wake.  In my wake, I carry a thousand kisses and a charm that smells like me.  In my wake, I carry a thousand cures for sleeplessness and a book on how to wake the dead.  In my wake, I carry dogs on motorcycles and yellow beads and a needle that captures things and makes them into what they want to become.  In my wake, I carry the siren's number, so I recognize the call when it comes, and when it comes, we might wake up, and we might wake up beside the mountain, beside the only mountain that knows how to wake us up and show us how to love, because it's not easy and it's not as simple as that but it's written on my veins and it tells the story of the sea, and the c is always me.