Monday, January 28, 2013

something like birth

because we are not born by mistake, because nothing gets born by mistake.  at the end of a season where witches turned back into trees, and the dog languages i heard in my sleep turned into nothing more (nothing less) than barking at the moon, and that same moon gave us something like a flood, one that lasted for enough time to get the idea that this was not by mistake, i counted the old ghosts who were still in my house.  they were asleep on the guest beds, twisting in their sleep, and wanting someone to come wake them up, but they would never spell it out, and it was time for them to start spelling things.  they slept like things that haven't yet learned how to long for something lost, and i was too mortal to tell them how to do it so that it might work: how to take that moment that never turned into a kiss, even though you wanted it to, and roll it into a small and glittery ball, and play with it between your teeth until the whole world was suddenly painted with that blue light that only the tantrics know; how to pore over a short letter full of verbs and nouns and nothing decorative, and learn how to read secret desires between the literal meanings of things; how to want something you are not supposed to have, and keep wanting it long after the morning comes to tell you why two big noses will never kiss.  they were asleep on the beds, and i wanted to be polite, so i told them they could linger, while i started to clean, hoping to myself that they would eventually get the hint (they never did).  it came like an interruption, something like birth, the ones that come at one in the morning, death can always come unannounced, but birth is always expected, because there are signs.  this is when the body starts to grow outward, this is when the noises under the stairs start to sound more like threats than charming beasts in the wilderness, this is when the chord starts to speak, and that soul from somewhere else starts to see the room as less of a room and more of a home, and your vision starts to do funny things...i always think it's the dead coming to collect something they forgot after the last party, the one that ended so late, but sometimes it's something new, not dead at all, not at all, and that's when my hands start to glow as if they were the most important things i own.  the priests and the prophets say this body is nothing we own, only borrow, but no one really believes them, because before we learn how to speak it, the body is all that we are, and at the end of a long day, our bodies is all that we are, and all that we own, and all that we have to share.  this is where my throat starts to tighten, and this is where my heart starts to murmur, having waited for so long that it has already forgotten what it was like to be furious, what it was like to be at the wrong stop for too many turns of the sun and the moon, this is where my hands start to crack from the cold, and this is when my fingers start to tremble, they are thinking about your face, my fingers are thinking about touching the curve of your chin, my fingers are so busy thinking that i forget they are trembling at all.  i've been awake, i've been entertaining the ghosts who won't wake up and won't go home, i've been awake and cleaning this room, a room that is starting to look more like a home where something can be born, these fingers of mine are trembling and telling me stories about something that might be ready to be born.  and my heart is a lighthouse, something to direct anyone but the one who lives there.  and my thoughts are empty, like tiny poems that don't need to mean anything to anyone, small waves that lap against the shore in order to make room, to make room, everything in me is telling me that my body knows it's time to start making room.  something like the end of the world.  something like the beginning of a revolution.  something like a shudder, something like a murmur, something like a sigh, something like a birth.

Friday, January 25, 2013

days of a new spell for an old ceremony/6-7

only i'm not undecided. so there.  
there is a market in berlin where they sell military objects from the last world war.  there you can find charming things, like old medals, metal letters, goggles from russian pilots, and impossibly curved swords.  every object is too heavy to carry in your luggage, so it all has to stay on the ground there, where all those things happened.
there's a market in chiapas where little girls in blue blouses will sell you all of the best fruit in the world, and everything is very cheap, but when you leave, mexico will forever own a part of your heart.
there's one in yucatan, in merida, in a warehouse that goes on for city blocks, and by the time you get lost, you realize that you are home.  there are hot chickens and hot fish and hot spices and hot ingredients to enchant your lover, and if you stay there for too long, you never really leave, you'll dream about it when the nights are too hot and wet to sleep deeply, and everything comes back to you.
every market brings the promise that everything you lost will come back to you, and the promise is never empty, it's always flowing until you are overflowed and start to get a sense of where you are in the world, every history connects to yours in those places, and everyone you meet is another aspect of yourself.  you are the poor, you are the healer, you are the magician, you are the butcher and the warrior, you are the one who concocts the recipes that will feed your family later on that night, and you are the one who fell in love under the weight of your own spell.
on day six i had a thought, and on day seven i had a letter, and i don't know what happened on day 8, because it hasn't happened yet, and it might be more than i can tell, or it might just be something secret. something that will grow into something my mouth can give back to the world after this rain, after this moon, after this lovely rain and this lovely moon and these dreams about the sea.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

days of a new spell for an old ceremony/5

so this should not be at all at all about how it all falls, how the world, this should not be all about how the world falls on me...but there's this...on day 5, 5 is important, on day 5, that strange little bump in my forehead, that's been there for months, it unlocked and opened up a sliver, i had a sliver in my head, i don't know how you get a sliver in your head (i mean my head, you, i can guess how it would happen to you), and so even though this was a day of listening to brilliant students talk until i felt like i was reading them like in a reading and felt exhausted, enough to get all sweaty and weak and wondering if i was going to pass out, after doing some new little workout thing that makes it impossible for me to move my butt (which is negligible, sure, but involved in almost everything i do when i am moving, and i move a lot it turns out), after walking around with a red mark on my head all day and feeling like a cab driver that had been rolled and run over, this was most charming, most charming indeed, i will leave this day charmed, let me just say, i am certainly charmed, this is nothing new, of course, except somehow i think it is, and the details of course we can discuss the details in the morning perhaps, we can discuss these details in the morning on some other day...there's that...there's always that...thank you grey day, i am feverish and bleeding and this was all just exactly right...xo

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

days of a new spell for an old ceremony/4

and this, day 4, day 3 already present and accounted for, this is 4, day 4, and not even done yet this 4, is not done, the 4 is never done, so keep your eyes peeled, things are not what they seem, & there are people around that want something from you, and ohhhhh it's not always what you want them to want (it's never what you want them to want, because desire would fold up into a ball of dust and break apart in a million pieces the next time a strong wind came through), and it's day 4 still and everything is empty and it's good it's empty there is this empty field and that's all there is, except.  there are always exceptions.  there is an exception.  and it always hits me sideways when i'm looking forward or backward, i get hit sideways, it hits me sideways, this is a stunning place to be, hit sideways, i don't know where i'm supposed to be looking after i get hit, i just fall down, i just fall down, i just fall, that's what happens on day 4, i fall.  

days of a new spell for an old ceremony/3

yesterday was hallucinatey all day, sick all day, sleepy all day, shadows out of the corners of the eyes all day, and the first card reading of the year at night and the streets came alive again on the way home and i felt a hollowness inside my head that was expanding in all directions and it didn't feel like the usual empty hollowness it was hallowed and it felt like something was starting to crawl out from the edges of the lake and it was coming in our direction and i was connected to everyone i knew and it was a good feeling to be connected because i forget how much i love you all and wish we could see each other more often and that life was not so short and this all seems so very very important and something is on the verge of urgent but not yet urgent not urgent enough that i know what it is yet

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Saturday, January 19, 2013

days of a new spell for an old ceremony/1

On the first day I woke up with a sweet song in my head and I didn't know where it was coming from, but I wanted to keep hearing it, because I liked what it was saying to me.  I spend too many mornings wondering about something that can't happen, and I spend too many evenings wondering why I still wonder about that.  I don't wonder any more.

On the first day I had to find my roots, they had been torn up from a series of invisible and vicious storms, and they had lost their life from being exposed in the last freeze.  On a shelf I found the stack of things that I always want, out of order, but that never matters very much, they all fit into the pockets of my jacket.  By the bathroom sink there was the faithful dog that had not been fed for too long, and she was asking for something new to chew on.  I couldn't help her, but I promised I would try to bring something back from the war outside.  Under the stairs, where the ancestors live, there were seven roots still soaking in water, these were fresh, still fresh, they're always fresh, but I have not noticed them for awhile.  On the living room floor, lying between water bottles and spoons and coffee grounds, I found my old clothes, the ones I used to wear when I was hungry.  I put them on and they still fit, and I understood that I was hungrier than last year, and that this would be helpful for so many things.  In the bookshelves I found three pressed flowers, something leftover from last year's lost loves, something I should keep close to me, but I'm not sure where to put them, because my pockets are already very full.  I'll decide tomorrow.

I try not to think about how this is going to be the most complicated thing I've ever done.  I try not to think about the things that have been lost between seasons.  I try not to think about your face, because when I think about your face, everything else goes away and I don't know where I'm supposed to be next, and here doesn't feel quite right.  This is better than not quite right, and so I go with that for now.  But there are sea monsters around every corner, they just woke up, and they tell me that this is going to be much more than I suspect, that this will all add up to more than I expect, and I suspect that you already know why.

Thursday, January 17, 2013

things of the father

We find ourselves at the sea, over and over, the way the waves suck us back into ourselves, and these countable repetitions of the phases of the moon, they make us make sense of our own repetitions.  Even if there is no sense.  We have to have stories about ourselves to tell ourselves in order to make lines in the sand that mark us from here to there and back all over again.
Like everything, I am traces, we are traces, of an original repetition that we will never get to the bottom of.  We are a repetition of something that has happened before, we have already happened, and this is the playing out of a complicated repetition of original energy that we can never get to the bottom of.  This is the music we heard in a cafe that we heard together, that we understood was going to be important, because it was the music we had already heard when we were not together, and it might matter that our matter is far away from each other, or it might not matter because it repeats, and we'll repeat in time, according to the flow of the ocean, and it won't have anything to do with when we want it to happen, our desire won't make the flow stronger or weaker.
None of this is within anyone's control.
There are things that are wrong with the people I am surrounding myself with, there are a thousand pains from a thousand lifetimes ago, that are wrong.  I am not going to complain.  I'm bothered by the way some of these things keep repeating, the same people keep coming into my life again and again, with new faces and old faces, and the new faces say the things that the old faces used to say, and I see the same longing in those faces, and watch them try to make sense out of something that is not in anyone's control.  And the old faces keep coming back to try to say things with new faces, but we all really know it's the same desire in another version, another phrasing of an original theme that we can't get to the bottom of.  I know this because I have an old face.
There's an old sickness that keeps returning, to all of the people I am surrounding myself with, multiple sicknesses that won't go away, or that keep coming back, and I am here to help things.  My own sickness is not very sick these days, and I am not trapped, by body is lean and I'm moving in space according to my own desires and the air is warm enough for right now and I can go where I feel like going, and I talk to whoever I like, and I won't complain about these repetitions, because it's part of a pattern that is beyond me.
In the house I grew up, my father is taking all the boxes of photographs and letters off the shelves and is busy categorizing all the people he knew and was during his life.  The old objects of the past are all over the tables, the objects speak like letters, and the letter are becoming objects.  This is the object where my grandmother lays out the incomplete history of migrations from Poland to here.  This is the letter that looks like a keychain that I kept from the first woman I loved completely.  Nothing is fading like a ghost, they all have the exact life they are supposed to have right now.
In the house where I grew up, my brother is losing track of everyday objects, things do not fit where they should, and physics should not have to apply to things when it's important, when this moment is so terribly important and urgent, and the present needs to confront the past and learn how to make friends with it, but it will not cannot.
It's a strange dance, and I don't know the right moves, and I'm too confused about my own desires to make the moves in an order that will set anything right, so I am caught in the same energy flow, and am at my calmest when I am aware and not aware at the same time, and not trying to resist anything, not even my own desire to resist.  There are no new loves to open the year and make things bright, only a dark resistance to brightness, and the need for the living ghosts to make themselves understood.  Objects and languages separate us, and our hands are already sore from working the knots.
I ask the same mermaid, please take me under, please take me under all of this, so that I can see it through water, so that I can see their suffering through water, so that I can hear the pulse in my own head, place a list of names on my pillow, so that when I wake up, I might know who to love, and how.  

Thursday, January 10, 2013

on the 5th day of may in the drizzling rain

So there's this: for starters, there's this: I'm probably kind of old, but I don't know how to act my age.
And there's also this:  this is probably even more important: I am married.  But I'm not sure who I'm married to.  I don't think it's very unusual.  I have friends, and I've even been that friend, who find themselves married to just one person with just one name (unlike me) for a very long time, and they are aware that they don't know who they are married to, either.  For a lot of people, this realization is the beginning of the end of the relationship, but for others, it's something that they just learn to live with.
I'm not really talking about it like it's a monogamous situation.  I'm not sure there is such a thing, really, for an extended period of time, really, because of the way we all tend to fall in love with any number of people all of our lives, there are always other characters in the movie, ones that come in and out, and they make the plot always so much more complex.  Even when none of the characters does anything about what they feel, or who they know they really are, but it's so much easier to pretend that they are not that, not that person who falls in love when they are supposed to be with one person for the rest of their lives.
I am not pretending I am that, but this marriage thing is more complex than I would have suspected, when I was younger and thought love was always complex, but only in the heart, not in the situation.  This is a complex situation.
It started in Vienna.  Like anything worth starting, this all started in Vienna. I was in Vienna because I decided to take a train there one afternoon, because I had money for a train ticket, and I knew that there was a woman in Vienna that I wanted to see, because she said she wanted to see me in Vienna.  I knew I wouldn't see her.  That sounds complicated.  She invited me, but we both know she wouldn't be there when I got there, but I went anyway.
She had a name that was almost exactly like the name of this woman I was trying to get over, only her name was pronounced just slightly differently, it had a Slavic accent to it, and I imagined that if I could focus on her for awhile, I would forget the other one.
It seems important to mention that I didn't think I was going to sleep with her, I don't think this was about that.  One of those stories where you try to forget someone by sleeping with someone else, in order to try to forget them, which doesn't really work, but it doesn't really fail, either.  A lot of people end up together for a very long time from situations like those.  This wasn't about that, sleeping with her, it was about erasing, and it did work, because when I was in Vienna, it was hotter than I suspected, and I was lost somewhere in a tangle of streets, and finally found myself in a cafe where I could sit and watch the sun shine on my glass of mineral water, and hear the sound of my spoon in my espresso, and there was nothing else to see or hear but the shine and the clink.  And they were both gone, in that moment, they were both lost forever and it was a bad moment for my ego that thought it would conquer hearts in Vienna, but good for everything else.
I lost her, but there was something I got to keep, a message from her in Slovenian, something about poetry and rain and something about our hearts, and she knew it was something that I would never be able to translate, and she liked it that I would never know what she said exactly, and in the end, I liked it, too.
And that set forth something, an energy in motion, that since that time I've never really felt alone, even though human lovers keep tending to come and go, and I keep tending to come and go, and I find myself still in love, despite all my best efforts, and it has nothing to do with any of them, at least not after they are gone.
But I like being in love, with real people, in real time, I like it very much, and think far too much about it.  But I also understand that every time is another repetition of something else, another experience that originated all of this, but the origins are never very clear.  Sometimes it seems close, some truth seems close, but it always disappears into something else.  ("There was the time she looked at me and reminded me of that one I kissed when I was sixteen and it was New Year's Eve and the kiss lasted for an hour and that must be it, that's who she reminds me of,"  "But she is very much like this idea I had of Mary Magdelene when I was only five, and I heard about her and thought, 'That's what I want, I want that one to walk through the streets of Jerusalem with me," or, "This one has the breath of Oshun in her, and I am helpless before any of that.")
((In truth, I am helpless, but it has nothing to do with the small gestures of human beings, and my own small gestures are insufficient to make someone fall in love with me, no matter how much I might think otherwise on some afternoons.))
And there are friends who always tell me that I just haven't met the right person yet, but of course, I have, I meet the right person all the time.  They anchor me, and then they unanchor me, and I always find myself floating somewhere in the middle of the ocean, and the ocean is that thing we all come from, so I am unanchored, but I am not alone.  That's very important.  I really am not alone.
And I don't think I'm alone in this, either, this place that felt like so much quicksand once now feels like water that won't drown me, but is unable to sustain any kind of roots.
I don't trust history, I don't trust the forces that push us forward in time and make us behave according to our place in time and space, and I think this might have everything to do with how we love now.

Monday, January 7, 2013

about fives

there's a ghost who's got its teeth in my lower back, it's almost constant, but i can move, and i can do more than i could do last year...running miles, lifting ridiculous things over my head, throwing things on the floor, and all those things those weights can do...i like where this is taking me, and like the new lines in my skin, everything is tight and i feel like i have something i can move in...i like the movement...i like the change...it was my fifth birthday on the fifth, and there is so much news, so much to tell, but i can't tell...i can't tell yet for myself, and there are more things that i can't tell then i've ever had to not tell, i like how this is unfolding, but oh, there are so many doors to close, and so many hopeless things that i had to send out to sea at the beginning of the year...i'm not happy or sad about any of them, but they go and i feel something pulling in my chest, i'll miss those precious things that held a hundred promises that couldn't make it to the surface of the sea...i'm half under the water, and half in the sky, and very far from earth, there is too much to do between the thens and nows, and i can't stop and can't sleep for long enough, but there is coconut and there is honey and there is cinnamon and it's all exactly where it needs to be.  i'm calm, i'm a restless mess, i'm sure of everything, everything is unknowable, i am a hermit, i am in love, i am of two minds, and i know exactly what i'm doing.  it's not good, it's not bad, it's not happy, it's not sad, but i sure do miss you.  

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

pop life

it's a little exhausting, there's this list of things we never did, and i'm liking the idea of doing them before the year is out, but there are only 363 days left and there's never enough time in the day...i have these large ideas to move around in a small space, incomplete and disappointing icons of sexual energy in a gallery that is too small for my big thumb, a life of making art in a small studio space with people i haven't even met yet, some of whom are bound to be tall(ish), and an altar that holds the elemental forces of the universe.  it's a lot to carry, but that's my name, i carry the weight of the world over the river in the middle of a storm (and there are those other names, i can't talk about that here, sh, please, child, not here good lawd)...saturday is five years ago that the gods got born in my head, and this is the evening of my last bender 9 years ago, the one where i threw up blood during a rehearsal for a public art piece against that goddam sheriff...these things are all good portents, but look at the inside of my ribs, it's all covered with gravel from birds trying to scratch at my heart...these are all good portents, and what's worse is that everywhere i go i'm seeing evidence of the struggle between heroic epic love and couples who stay together but act like morons...i wish i could be undecided...today, jim was teaching a class in marketing, and pam was there, & he fell in love with her the fifth time he saw her, but she keeps swearing that she just doesn't give a fuck...and then rachel is talking to ross again, but neither of them thinks it has to mean anything, except he can't sleep because he keeps thinking about her all the time, and even worse than that is how ted keeps writing about robin in his status updates, and sometimes robin likes them, and it's very confusing, and ted is worried that he might look like a fucking idiot (he does), but he also thinks this might be epic and heroic (it is)...and then, at the end of all that, there are all these people singing about living poor in france with english accents, except for the jewish guy, who is french for some reason, and my favorite part comes when the french prostitute (the one who does not look french or english, you know, the hottie) gives her life for love, even though the guy has too many freckles and cannot grow a beard...at the end of the day, i have to understand that it's going to be me, dying in a church, with my daughter and her new love (i hope he/she does not have so many freckles, i mean, please, adults? you know?) by my side and the french girl with the nice eyes is singing to me from beyond the grave...except, i hope she does not purse her lips and say god, but something else entirely, something like "orisha" or "cuban cigar" or "french tickler" because otherwise i'm not sure i'd go into the goodnight singing, but apparently we don't have to sing well when we die, the dying is more important...and i suppose it's only reasonable that the desire for a tragic and epic love seems suspicious, and not necessarily the best invitation for a simple little game of chess (there are two important things to keep in mind: it's played without clothes, and i don't know how to play chess, you would win)...but...i am dark, darker than i thought, and am apparently happier to have a love i can write about than one i can live in...the day to day would drive me insane, unless there are a lot of extra people milling about, or perhaps if it smelled wonderful and pleasing...i could probably be lulled into a mundane and vapid love if there were the right smells, but all of this smells a little funny, and that weaving woman by the sea, looking at me like that, she is suspicious of me, but she doesn't know i'm just as suspicious of her, there's something important that she's not telling me, and i suppose it's ok if i never know what it is...she probably forgot to put her contacts in and thinks i'm someone else, and i'm better off not knowing about that, because that would be a disappointing way to open up a new fucking year.  

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

beautiful year

It covers my chest and moves down to my stomach, a sleeping tiger that holds me a little too tightly and tries to keep the sounds from coming out of my throat, this might not be as emo as it sounds, but it might be much, much worse...given to long fits that make me think I might be possessed by tigger, I run from one curious thing to another, and find the entire world to be entirely fascinating, and on most days the world opens up to me like it were the most interesting guest at a party and I get to find out more about what it thinks about any number of meaningless and distracting subjects...and sometimes these things pour out their mundane water and spit and sweat and overflow into a well that is nothing if not sacred, those things that keep us busy in our heads, that make our tongues comforted by sweetnesses of possibility or memory or even real honey, they sometimes turn inside out and reveal their profound other sides, and this sweetness is mixed with bitterness in equal measure...this is half salt and half sugar and the scale is balanced...not a consolation, but it can't be a consolation, it's the body with its heart and nerve exposed in the world, these things make me feel...and it seems to wake up with the sun every morning lately, that I am more than a little optimistic and hopeful about everything in the world, but am more often than not guided by a remarkable sadness that is really at the center of everything...those things those heart those spirits who have a gravitational pull to me and all my curious senses, hold the same kind of sadness, even if none of us really understand it, what its for, what it did to us the last time around, or what it can do for us...and the best favor we can do, perhaps, is to talk to it, and listen to it, and ignore all the kinds of advice there are to fill it, because I suspect it keeps us breathing on long nights, and keeps us from trying to fill ourselves with something else from each other...because the best nights of all the thousand nights in a year when we find ourselves somewhere in love, we don't try to fill the gap, but make love to it in each other, or talk to it through each other, in order to acknowledge that we have the same mutual friend.

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...