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.