Friday, January 27, 2017

Another Lost Book of Love

*****

There are those who are born into forgetting, they have to learn everything through the skin, over and over and over again, and they never do learn in a way that gets them past themselves. There are those who are given access to the pages written in the Book of Love, who can see the story and its lessons before it plays itself out, they see their destinies and they can decide to fall in love even though it is doomed, or do something else, and they almost always do something else. And there are those who have left the Book of Love entirely, who escape, erasing their traces and disappearing like rabbits into a tree trunk, their footprints barely visible, almost already eroded. Of the three groups, the first one, the ones who learn through the skin and forget and have to learn over and over again, caught in an endless cycle, are the most delightful people I have ever met and I have always wanted to be one, and on most days I feel like a rabbit, heart beating and missing someone I haven't met.

*****

We wanted to be ascended masters, but we kept getting caught in our own reflections.

*****

She's covered with napkins and listening to damien rice, she says it's important that he let her have the first breath in the song, this is important, she sings first, everyone was waiting for this album and when it begins we don't hear his voice, we hear hers, this is important. We telegraph ourselves to each other, we tell each other everything we need to know, we like to hear our stories and we like to signal through the flames, this is what my heart is like, and most of the time, the one we are telegraphing to doesn't get it, and that's part of why we do it.


*****

I'm looking at her blue jacket, how it matches her eyes, and that beauty mark, and then I'm looking at her button shirt under the jacket, and I'm thinking about my hand under her jacket, imagining how she will look at me when my hand is on her heart, and I get so hot in my head that I cannot think straight any more. This is me at 17. This is me at 21. This is me at 49. Nothing is really changed, except there are a million stories between then and now.

*****

We progress in 7s, new skin for every 7 years, everything is new, and I knew that 7 x 7 would be important, but I didn't know it would be the year I spent pretending you leaving didn't hurt.

*****

And then I felt so bad and awful and beat up by the world and my heart was flat and there was only dusty bones in there and you could shake it and they would all fall out through the cracks, and I lay down on the road in the middle of the road and I said I'm done, that's it, I am done, I cannot love anything or anyone, this is all lost this is all fake, and just then an old flame driving by stopped and said this letter I just found this letter you wrote me do you remember this letter? and I don't remember this letter, but I remember what she wrote back, it was the sweetest thing anyone ever said to anyone ever anywhere.

*****

It is dark and she is talking and she is learning secret signs and they have to do with bodywork and she is thinking of a secret sign, and I see it in the air above us and I tell her and she says, "Draw it on my back," and I draw it on her back, and she says, "Yes, that's it." It was easy because it was right there in the air above her head and I think it must be like that, that is how it is, it is always like that, but we don't see it when we don't know how to see it.

So I put my head into the fireplace, the lap of the goddess, and I say please lull me to sleep, please lull me into that place where I am not fighting where I am not willing to argue over every little thing, please make my head stop talking so I can hear you and know things. I want you to teach me things, and today I don't even care if they hurt. They probably will hurt. And the goddess is standing over me when I wake up and she is eating a bowl of captain crunch and she is dripping sweet milk on my head and it feels nice and she says, "The fireplace is not the lap of the goddess, idiot."

*****

I really really really don't mean for it to get this strange. It always works out like that though, and the worst of it is, I know that it's really not very strange at all. My edge is not as far away as I like to think. I've never been hurt, not deliberately, and I've never been able to hurt someone, not deliberately, not like that, I would be the one with the whip who looks like an idiot, standing there in some leather something and wishing I were somewhere else, that even being on break from a job at a corporation would be less awkward than pretending I like this.

*****

There is a gentle stream and it's a warm day and I dip my feet in, and my friend says, "Haha, you are so stupid."
And I'm like, "Oh, what?"
And she's all, "You are going to get sucked into the current and get bashed to pieces."
And I'm all, "How do you know?"
She's like, "Because it happened a year ago, and three years ago, and 14 years ago, and 30 years ago."
And there is a dog who is watching and the dog says, "That is what it's like to get born again and again and again. Jump into the river."

*****

I'm driving through the mountains at night, and up ahead there is a figure and her name is Isabel and she is looking like a queen, and I get closer and realize this is the same Isabel who killed me in 2010 and who tried to kill me last year, and I shouldn't stop, but I do, I am pulling over and we are so surprised to see that we're still alive after all this time, we have so much to catch up on.

We're inside a cafe within minutes and before I know it she is telling me about how they use the dates from the date palms to make the date shakes, and for some reason, I am back in some whirlpool of childhood. I might mean tide pool not whirlpool. And someone is telling me about dates and date palms and I don't understand that dates are those little brown round pod things, like big raisins, no one explains that to me, and I don't know what dates are and I guess it has something to do with the palm itself, like they must hammer out the leaf itself and extract something from it. I don't know how it works. So when Isabel (who I assume, like you must, is a ghost) tells me about date shakes, I am back there, a child who is trying to understand something everyone seems to know, because there is an important detail (what exactly is a date) that everyone knows and I don't know how to ask. And this is what love has always felt like to me. Everyone knows and there's a secret but I don't know the right question. What is a date?

******




(these are fragments I will continue)












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