Friday, June 28, 2013

Nearly as I can reckon

Time is short and all of the work that lies in front of me, papers and videos and planning flats, things I like.  And there are obligations to follow through and I like those too because I love the people involved. And I love the heat of this place when it explodes and I don't know why this is not a volcano. It should be a volcano. And on a night like this when my bones are crackling with marrow that flows but will not crack, there are a hundred unfinished stories of desire spread out on my bed, and nothing has to happen to someone who is so in between. 

In the hostel of liminal travelers, we hardly make eye contact, because we don't want anything impossible to start, because those are the very things that brought us here in the first place.  But when we do connect through the eye, and that silver thread (or gold, it might be gilt, I don't remember), we tell ourselves, we tell each other, no, we're doing things different this time, we decided for ourselves this time we would be different.  And there would be no exceptions. 

So I ask myself why, when it's not even midnight, or it's that time of the morning when the cups and papers are piling themselves on us and getting us heavy enough to leave, before it gets any heavier, I ask myself why I am lighting a yellow candle and asking Her to pay special attention to This One, to bring her closer, because I want to find out things before I have to leave.  

And I tell myself it's just because she reminded me of someone I lost, and I'm just visiting another ghost again, and this is nothing different or new, when I really suspect that this is not the same thing at all.  Despite so much glitter turning out to be nothing more than glitter, there's a suspicion this might not be that, just because it's something I don't want right now.  

The night is not too long, and the heat of the day does not make me shiver later in the dark, because I don't sleep, because I am humbled before these tasks at hand, and there is just enough time, but nothing extra.  So I ask myself why I am asking the manager for an extra pillow, an extra towel, and sleep lightly just in case she comes in with the sea monsters when they enter in between the cracks of one day and the next. 

And I keep thinking about these openings in liminal spaces, the pupil that opens wider when you see someone you think you might want to love, and that space between the muscles on the chest, when the sweat of the day is something you wished did not belong to only you.  And I keep saying things to myself, you, you, you, and wonder if you might be listening, listening to this small and futile prayer, the one that says, I'm not ready for something like this, but tonight there is room for you in between all these spaces.






















Sunday, June 23, 2013

Under the river

I don't think it was my intention (I don't do things without intention) to close the circle (you can't close a circle all the way something always slips in or out) between that thing (it was a series, or a cycle) and this next thing, this next unknowable thing (you always know some things), but when I walked back in to my empty room, I saw that I was clean and all of that was done and I would miss some of it and I wouldn't remember some of it and that was that.  There was this new thing (there's always a new thing) and I knew it was something that I wanted very much.  That it was something that would happen, something that I wanted to happen very much, but it might not happen in any expected order.  And that it would happen in a way that was like a blip on a radar, with nothing about it getting in the way of these next things, or it would happen in a way that would interrupt everything and turn everything upside down, and either one would be all right, but that wasn't important.  Because what was going to be important already started, that I was at the end of the tunnel and almost out, but I turned my head, and I don't know if its backwards or forwards or if that matters.  These things matter if we are turned sideways and I was sideways, and thinking already about how I would be awake and spending time looking at your pictures and just wondering about all of this (even though it has a very short history). And that was just the distraction I needed to avoid looking at the things that had been laid on the ground in my empty room, and I did not notice that there were spirits flying through the air wondering why I was not praying to the moon, but they don't know it yet, and you don't know it yet, but I am always praying to the moon, only now it's close enough that I can hear her answering back, and she is already saying your name, before I can even open my mouth. 

Thursday, June 20, 2013

My big fingers

My eyes are too tired to see anything new, and my heart is a story that I tell to anyone, but it's too far into a different kind of chapter to be playing or hearing any gypsy music, but.  If we find ourselves walking past street names we can't pronounce, and the roaring of the canal is closer than we ever imagined, and you told me the story of your grandparents meeting in France, speaking my first language and second language better than me, I would have no choice but to fall in love with you.

Saturday, June 15, 2013

after that new moon

that one right back there, that one that closed those doors, opened these doors, and kept a few doors open because those tracks are still running (and a few doors are kept open that I'm not even aware of)  ((i'm not aware of a lot of things))...there is also this: the wise old(er) man in my head, one who is my father (self) is laying things out, this is where things are right now and so on and so forth, but by the end, he says, very clearly, "but despite what you think these days, that this is all stupid and you are done with things like this, and that you are no longer playing in those games, your role is many things, of course, but it will always be, you will always be playing the role of the one who is chasing after that girl.."  and if it is true, i don't know who it's true about, but it feels true, but it can't be that one, that is definitely done (along with that one and that other one), and there's this, that looks very interesting, but it looks to me like a maybe that will soon enough turn into a no, and i'm not convinced the no is from her at all, and then there is this one right here, especially when she's casting that profile, because that profile is holding my attention long enough to start letting the scene play out in my head, but when the scene plays out it does become stupid, and i'm somewhere wondering what that last text means, and how jealousy is not a cape that looks good on me at all (and no one can pull off a cape right now, no one, not here, and not over there), so i must know something that i don't know, i must be referring to someone down there, someone i haven't met yet, but.  there is this suspicion that all the players are really already right here, that we've already met, that our unresolved relationship is going to be resolved sooner than i think, and long before we are ready for it...as if, as if, three lifetimes ago we were all leapfrogging, in between lifetimes, missing each other by twenty years or so (not that this would stop me from anything, even though you might think it should), and before that, we were missing each other by 60 years or so, entire lifetimes or so, and those were the loneliest lifetimes anyone ever lived ever in the history of everything that is in history, so this time, we're leapfrogging, and missing the beat at the most important moments, but, we have a chance, because we are in time, we are here in time, we are going to resolve this in time, all in good time...

Friday, June 7, 2013

7-8 june 2013

on a new moon like this, about to turn 46 like this, i want to say something to myself like this, something that makes sense, something that will set a tone, or mark a tone, for everything that's about to reset and start over.  but in truth, these days have been too hot, and everything that was magic has been replaced with physics.  alchemy is obvious, and love is ridiculous, same as they were last year at about this same time, and everything we want is already written on our clothes.  no one is hiding anything of interest, and all of our secrets are pouring out of our windows at stop lights.  and just when i'm convinced there's nothing left to conjure, and nothing left to surprise me, things that are already familiar and expected start to multiply themselves, announcing themselves a moment before they fall into the world.  a dog out of the corner of my eye becomes the dog entering the room a moment too late, trying to catch up with its shadow.  that one that got lost two years ago is on the edges of the room, looking to see if there's any room, if they can come back in, and if they do come back, will they be welcomed or even remembered?  this is all exactly how it is supposed to be, and i don't want anything that's left unresolved to come back and come true.  and the ragtime music my grandmother plays starts to cycle up again, and this time it's different, and the ghost of fellini is right outside the door, asking if he can direct the next scene.  in the next scene i won't be chasing ghosts in parking lots, and i won't be puzzling over a message from someone who's less than half my age, and i won't be looking for signs that someone back there still thinks about me.  but i will be caught, i will be struck dumb, i will be tied, i will be thinking i must be too old for something like this.  my bed is a perfect size, and my house will become something else, and there will be a dozen magicians who are not what they claim to be.  there will be too many women smoking on the veranda, failing to puzzle out the mysteries of the next identity, and there will be a hundred projects that fall flat, and ten that fly like owls and peacocks and angry blackbirds.  there will be exes and soon to be exes and someone who will stay.  there will be a thousand new variations that disguise themselves as repetitions.  everyone who should be invited will find their way to my door, and i will turn down a dozen invitations with no regret, and one that will bother me through a long hot season.  and if there are bodies, if there are more bodies, brought into the relentless sun so that the bones can be made clean, there will also be new births, and there will be the beginnings of new threads that always make this place vastly more interesting than it just was.  there will be dog claws and cat teeth and a dead one who i will come to know by name.  there will always be more dead who know our names, and there will always be more young ones who haven't chosen their names yet.  and that beloved one, who always comes back, always with new names, will come back with a hundred names and a hundred faces.  and sometime soon we will all be waking up where no one knows our name yet, who will whisper things into our ears in languages we've never heard before.  and everything that is beautiful will be covered with a layer of salt water, because we will learn how to take these things that fly through our hands and make them holy so that we can know that this year is no harder than the last, that in the land of our fathers, the local spirits have a vested interest in seeing these things continue. 

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...