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.

dont start

This is the part of the year where the solar calendar (20 days a month) and the lunar calendar (30) come to a close, ending at a total of 360 days, and the last 5 days are the Dead Days.  It's good news for those of us who spend a lot of time getting news, advice, and especially recipes, from the ones who have gone before.  It's also the time when some of the traditional Mayan people know the gods are out walking, and its their domain now, this surface of the earth, and the best thing to do is stay indoors and eat well.  And also not have sex and not get angry, because those things are too hot for these days.

I'm not Mayan or Mayab and not one of the H-Men in their worlds, so I don't have to worry about following all the prescriptions.  This is also good news, because one of my favorite presents is a mask that covers up my face except for the eyes.  It's white and has roses on the top, and there are so many possibilities. 

I'm a little skittish, though, because every time I try to imagine anything with masks, it starts off very interesting, then somewhere in there, I am asking, "Oh, my gosh, I'm sorry, did that hurt?  We can just go get coffee if this is too weird," and that ends everything for everyone.  I understand all the implications, and the main one is that it's only happening in my head, which should mean something. 

But at the end of a year with so many things that have happened in my head, I'm learning how to listen to it a little more, the things that are true, and separate them from the imagined problems and hurts, and not get so angry at myself for saying and doing things I didn't say or do, and also forgiving anyone else for things they may have said or done, or not done.  What upsets me is only a problem in my own mind, and this is certainly good news.

It's not very easy, though, in the season where Pan walks by my doorway every morning telling me there is something to do out there, and Oshun visits every night with her black birds to tell me that I am supposed to leave it all up to her.  It's not easy.  Not because I am tied to those old definitions of m-f that say I am supposed to be the active principle, and the sun, and the seed, and the aggressive one (these things are true, and they're true for everyone, but the game plays out much better when I take that up, because, I don't know why because, when I want things to happen they tend to work out better when I make them happen, and anything else usually means I've given up).  Not because I am possessed with a life that is full of grieving and loss, although that's true for me as much as anyone (although there are things with me that are connected to the graveyard that make these things more grave with me).  It's not easy because, for all the things that happened in my mind, the ones that took place in the world that other people participate in have made me want to stop and look closer.

Looking closer always gives me a sense of want and longing, and it's impossible to break out of that kind of absinthe spell, and probably because I am not supposed to break free, but figure out the trick of how to live there, or at least visit, or at least open my doors to it.  And I think that saying my door is open is not enough, because it's not true, because it's not really an open door.  I hold it shut even though I think it's open, because the last person to pass through that door made me stop and pay attention, because that's what happens when something important is happening and I am paying attention.  I was.

The best way to put a love spell on someone is to tell them you like them, and the best ritual for opening a door is to open the door.  This is not a good time for starting any new things.  This comes as very good news to anyone who suspects that something is not done.  So I try to smoke a cigar through a mask without a mouth, and sit on a porch in front of a house that isn't mine, and whenever I get an itch to make spells in the kitchen, there are black birds who come to my feet and remind me that I need to leave the spells up to them, and wait for Pan's advice on how to get through another night, and remember that we are not gods, even though there were moments where it certainly seemed as though immortality were immanent.  This is a revolution, after all.  The best thing that could happen is that we don't lose, and that we don't win, but make room for something utterly unexpected.  That's what we are when we're heroes.  Utterly unexpected.

entre los culos, no hay espacio

Meanwhile, she is thinking about cows, and is very much concerned with the one that is certainly about to step out right in front of her.  Only she isn't sure exactly where that might be, because so much of the road is uncertain.  It's that time of the year when there are cracks in the cement, and there are not enough workers coming to repair all of the things that are breaking apart.  It's not crazy, she hopes, but she is certain that she is starting to see glimpses of the dwarves who live beneath the surface of the road coming out to have a look at the world they will inherit.

That's not bad news, not for her, because those very same dwarfs who are making lines in the air with their hands when she is falling asleep are more capable of taking over all of these important operations.  It's obvious to anyone who's paying attention that this isn't working, and these are the ones who can do things right, because they are always so much closer to the sea.  The sea is where you will unlock me, she thinks, and throws the thought out of her mouth through her tongue, because she doesn't trust where it came from.  The dwarfi (the correct plural) have been running things without our knowledge for a very long time, and it's better not to say these things out loud because she starts to think about how she might be sounding like the kinds of people she wants to avoid.  But everything I try to avoid is the very thing that I always end up hitting, and I never do get to hit what I aim for, so maybe I should start playing with the scope of my own life, and learn how to hit without shooting the target. 

It would be better and so much easier if there were not crabs crawling out of the cracks in the road, far too many to avoid certain disasters and tragedies, and she really wishes she could look away from the road because she doesn't want to see what it going to happen to these crabs.

She starts to turn her attention away from the unavoidable horrors that are about to take place by thinking about her daughter, who is becoming a miniature version of her, and getting larger all the time.  Eventually, with the right amount of food and water and sunlight, the daughter will get larger than the mother and if she has the right escape plan, she will have slipped out entirely before she is eaten.  Except for now everything is very much okay, and her life is complete, in its way, in its way.  There are threats of being eaten that also come along with the threat that she will be engulfed, and if she is smaller than the daughter then she might be more aligned with the realm of the dwarfen people, and that's not as unsafe as the rest of this is turning out to be.  There are also three wonderful things to think about that will make this holiday complete, and they all have to do with bachata.  She is bachata, after all, and even though she has never been to the soil, the rhythm is in her bones.  Suddenly, she is becoming aware that the narrator in her head is actually making fun of her, and it's nice to know that someone cares enough to pay attention, but not like this.

"I am more annoyed with you than you will ever know," she says to the narrator, who cannot hear, or it would be written, it would be wood, glass, and stone.

In the end, she hits the cow, trying to avoid the cow she runs straight into it, and hits it so directly that either there is a sudden death or the kind of energy exchange that the souls change place.  She isn't sure what this is, except she is aware that they are both still breathing, and that might or might not be a good thing.  She is only aware that she is even more annoyed with the narrator by now, who she cuts out and cuts out over and over again, but it always comes back.

"Why do you keep coming back?" she says.

And the narrator (which is nothing less than her ego, and nothing more), has this to say.  "I have been watching you do these same things over and over for such a long time that I've learned how to make a rhythm from your repetitions, and I am the song running through the back of your mind, the back of your mind, whenever something is about to start again.  You were praying last night to be more connecting to the things that are, and even though there are no ouija boards in this cafe of your mind, the dead speak through the living, and the living might not be limited to your blood relatives, and might include the plants and the cows.  This is something that I arranged because I love you so very much and you always turn away before the meat starts to turn juicy.  This is the butter sauce of the things you lost, and there are birds flying from your mouth whenever you feel so very much alone.  Pay attention to them."

At this moment, and not uncoincidentally, the flock of birds before her eyes thinned out, and as they thinned and their number turned from a hundred to three, she understood that this was love and that this was war, and that the ones who left the sky were settling in her stomach.  It would not be so bad if they were not trying to peck their way out, but that's what they do.  She doesn't want to think about him, but she does, and she wishes for a revolution as violent as the last one, only this time she hopes that they both get to wake up, in a warm room, with daughters who don't turn into giants, looking at each other through the eyes of cows, who know more, who know so much more, than we like to think, and all of the other things that don't go away even though they might be dead and buried. 

conversations with broken men

first part

this is true.  i'm sitting outside and smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and starting to feel this burning in my chest start to feel like a cold feels, if i could feel my hands i might know for sure.  but i don't know anything for sure, not at this time of year.  this is the point where the light comes back, but it is also really the second-longest night of the year, and tomorrow is the third-longest, and there are more long nights ahead.  that could be good news.

but this, the true part, this is what i wanted to tell you, that i was thinking this cold was good because it's getting out of the way, and soon the desert will warm up a little, and i think that's a good place to return.  i don't know how long you're here, i don't think i am supposed to ask.

second part

these are conversations around coffee, always coffee, always talking about the same thing.  it would be better, so much more convenient, if all of my friends were in love with the same woman, her name could be sara, and we would all be getting together to talk about how things are with sara, how the revolutionary hero is watching his heart move backwards and forwards while sara gets in and gets out and changes her look, and how the musical wizard is living with sara and how he thinks about her all the time even when she's with him all the time but it's even worse when she's gone, and how the shaman with the broken bike is missing sara and thinking about something beautiful that happened once but it happened for so long that it became a beautiful poem, someone should write that poem someday.

the broken men are complaining about being broken, and the broken men are becoming aware that the thing that is broken is the place where all the healing waters come thru and release, and the broken men are not aware that these healing things also come from them, because they are so concerned that they are broken men.  this is a night of sudden recognitions in the dark.  on the second darkest night of the year, some of the broken men go home to sara, some of the broken men wish they were sara, and some of the broken men are already gone deep into the desert, with the intention of grieving for sara but unaware that they are turning into something else entirely, and this is always the way of broken men.

thirdly

he decides that he is not going to send any hidden messages after this one.  this is the last time he will speak of it, and afterwards he will walk the earth, like caine in kung fu.  he decides that he will take all the love left in his heart, and ask the woman with brooms for hands to sweep his heart out, and after that there will be no more talk of these things, and everything will be what it looks like on the second-darkest day of the year.

but the worst part for him is that as soon as the love is swept from his heart, he looks up and sees a shooting star coming from the cold north, and before he is even aware that his mouth is open and his tongue is moving, he is whispering her name (and it's not sara).

and so fourth and so on

this year wore on the bones like every year, and the bones of the ones who were here at the beginning of the year who are not here at the end, they wear their way into the way that we sleep, and i am dreaming of white cats with grey spots who know the secrets of flight.  this year wore into the organs of the living, and while we were busy trying to build bodies without organs, there was something that was starting to grow, and some of the warrior men were starting to show signs of age that had nothing and everything to do with the war.  the war that wore through our bones was only made worse by the endless promise that it would be over, and every checkpoint i drive through is a little further and a little closer to someone that i almost learned how to forget.  and every checkpoint gets a little more tense, because this is a revolution, and some of us are wizards and some of us are shamans, and all of us are healers, and on some nights it seems possible to re-define god.  they say there are a thousand names and a thousand faces for god, and our 400 gods have a dozen names each, but that's just math.  at every checkpoint, i am leaving a small piece of skin and cloth, parts that don't work any more, and if i leave them scattered they won't have time to gather together again and come back, because things like this might take all the time in the world.  it's taking a lifetime to shed all my skin, and it's taking all my breath to keep myself from folding up like a clam and falling back into the sea, but in the middle of these wars i remember nights when it felt like i was learning how to breathe under water, and how to walk on the floor of the ocean.  beauty is soft when there is a whole morning ahead and every cafe is filled with women playing with their hair, when it comes holding a heart in one hand and a mask in the other it is as brutal as the current and as bright and sharp as coral, but if you look too close at my name it won't take long to understand that i always was a child of the sea.  and if i am broken it is only because i am always breaking, trading my tongue for stones, something that can speak about what it means to redefine god, and fevered like the bones of a soldier, like the eyes of a wild horse, like a diviner looking at the patterns on the sand and finding something in the pieces, like a lover distracted by the glintings of jewels that decorate the faces of the ones who know secrets of how to put things back together in patterns we can use.  like a friend who suddenly recognizes that shooting stars are never seen by those who need too much, or those who grieve too much, or those who believe too much, but by those who are engaged in a life of telling the story of the love triangle between the sky, and the earth, and the bottom of the sea. 

turning

The world is turning, apparently, in the way that it can only turn when it's moving from darkness and back into light, but everything is much slower than a movie or a novel even but not one of those French novels where they describe everything, and it's boring because it's the 19th century and there's not enough dance breaks.  (But I know, I knowwww....they danced in France in the 19th century, and that's how I want to dance with you, with all our stylish masks, this could work)...

This is hard right now because I have just been given a new face, one from the bottom of the sea.  But I am stuck in the world of wounded men again, and one of the casualties is my motorcycle.  So I am having long conversations on the phone, where I am saying things like, "Look, I don't care how it gets fixed, just fix it, mister," and, "Look, we can play this two ways, see..." and the men on the other end of the phone are putting up fights, and we are all fighting, fighting over my sweet cherry ride.

If I was like this for just an hour every day it would be all right, I could do it, but I'm not like that, not for long, because these are the kinds of masks that freeze on a person's skull, and I need that because it is doing important things suddenly.  Like turn into something that I thought I couldn't be, that I thought I couldn't have, and suddenly all the big questions are all right, and time is moving in a direction that I like, but I don't know how to manage all the details.

But because I have no other choice, I am stuck buying gas for a very big van and thinking about my motorcycle more than I like to, and wondering about how anything ever really happens for some people, how the deck is certainly stacked.  But I need to remember, this is a revolutionary time, and nothing here is what it seems, and every stone turned or not holds things we can't understand, so, so, so, I focus on the seasalt that sticks to the bottom of my lip, and listen to the blood in my veins, and these old songs that keep coming up to the surface are beautiful songs, and all the lovely mermaids are singing and crashing with the waves, and the small desires that keep us up are the only things worth listening to these days, because they might unlock some of the things that are trying to boil, boiling like a rage in the middle of a storm at sea, and that is where you will unlock me.

capitulation nombre alla mar

He sat for a long time at the edge of the water.  There was a table in front of him and a chair underneath him and another chair across from him.  There was coffee in a fancy white coffee set in front of him and he was aware that it was getting cold, so he was drinking it himself because he was starting to see that she wasn't going to come.  What was worse is that he hoped she would come.  And what was worse than that was that he forgot to invite her.

Meanwhile, the dead come singing, just long enough to introduce ourselves in the foam on the wave, and when we see things like this, it is always more embarrassing than heartbreaking, really, because we do know some things about moving time and space, but it's up to you to make plans, and you don't know how to make plans that will work. 

At the bottom of the sea, meanwhile, he is talking to her and she is talking to him, and they are doing all the things they like to do with each other, but on the edges of the sea it just feels like they are tapping on walls at each other to let each other know secrets in morse code.  But the code is not the same when it translates from the depths to the surface, and it gets interference, and comes out in numbers, and that's why lovers are so often stuck in each other's company arguing about what these numbers might actually mean.  And they argue about times and dates and numbers of other lovers, codes written in numbers on phones and the number of times they are looking at other people while they are talking, and it is all a boring mess.

Under the sea, however, he is looking at the walls of fire in her eyes, the things that tell the stories of what happened between that last moment and this one, and there are cemeteries and there are dark rooms with neon lights and music, and there is the color behind her eyes when she is alone in her room and thinking about him.  She's learning to speak in other languages, and is trying to play him her music with his eyes.  This makes the birds that live in the back of his throat wake up and sing, and the sounds are words but they don't mean half as much as the drum of the tongue when he sings the words, because the drum in the tongue can only be understood when he plays on her.  So there is always a lot to talk about between them.  And he is wondering how to tell her about the wild horses that live in his veins, and how they have been sleeping, or riding without him, and when she is gone he feels like a wild horse on an empty beach, and he has been there so long that he can't remember being upset, only missing her. 

Children of the sea should meet by the sea, or at the very least think about each other when it is raining.  Rain is more related to mermaids than he ever understood, he wants to tell her, but it's a ridiculous thing to say under the sea, where everything is obvious.  He wants to tell her how he heard her, when she was thinking about him when it was raining, how he always heard her, and he would like to tell her that he thinks this means he always will, but it's too late in the year for promises, and at the start of new years the only thing that a lover needs is a blanket.  He is singing something he heard, about how a woman doesn't need any better covering than a man, something from the sixteenth century, and he is singing about unpacking the complicated text because they are more complicated texts than what is in the cannons of the sixteenth century, they are a different kind of gunpowder altogether, and he is totally unaware that she is surrounded by sisters that are gorgeous monstrosities in between the things of the human race, and the things of the sea, and if she were not so enchanted herself she would realize how enchanting she is, at least to him, at least at this particular moment, when he is still raining, he is raining, because he is swimming in a love spell that never went anywhere, except here, under the sea, to hide from the storms up above that never did have anything to do with them. 

capitulato nombarrando onsaydos: the very last thing ever

Not really last but last so far up until now.  This morning was another one of those very upsetting mornings that can only come around once in a great while, but they've been coming like waves like waves that come when a baby is trying to come, and impossible to keep up with, and this is like giving birth except nothing is getting born, not another human anyway.  And nothing is really like giving birth except for giving birth, and nothing is like war except for war, and nothing is like performance anxiety except for the anxiety that comes with a performance. 

Perhaps every one of those terms can be held in question, and perhaps it would be good to have a conversation about the words, using other words like "problematic," "complexity," and "situation," but it's that kind of conversation that has lead to a morning as upsetting as this one in the first place.  In the first place, when he woke up and he put his feet onto the cold floor, the first thing and the most difficult thing about the floor was all the sand.

The excavations of the old house and the sand that came back with him from the coast seems to just be building, and it should be thinning out and waning away.  It feels too much like the dust from the moon started to fall to earth and it's hitting here.  It is not his house.  This is not his house.  That seems like an important thing to say.  He had a house once, but not any more, and this is not that house.

He also had a vehicle before, and now the thing he is driving is not his.  There are a lot of borrowed things, and it is starting to feel like nothing can actually be what it is called, and this is kind of exciting, because that also means that everything can be whatever it needs to be.  And by the time the moon dust settles and we need to go back to calling things by names again, these things could be different things entirely and have different names entirely.  Things like girlfriends could be entirely different by the time the next moon comes around, and that's a very interesting idea, but this one is also interesting, and he's fully aware that he's not exactly miserable these days.  But he's not exactly happy.  But not miserable at all, because he heard things that seem true, and the things he heard are not bad things if they are true, and might even verge on being true and beautiful.

But this isn't that kind of  vehicle, and this isn't that kind of moon.  This is the moon in half already, it went away much quicker than it came, that's how they always are, he supposes.  This moon is lighting up the beach, and when his feet his the cold floor, there is sand, and there is beach extending out as far as his feet can reach (and much further because he is tall but not that tall, this is not one of those incredible long-leg man stories).  And every few feet there is a version of her, the Copper one, folded in on herself and sleeping like she were in a cocoon. 

This is entirely alarming because he thought that she had been away long enough that a few thoughts here and there wouldn't bring her back like this, but they always do.  She is like the stations of the cross, and as he walks to each one, she tells him something that she could never say when it really mattered. 

People are like that, he thinks, you never can really know what they're really thinking, but then again I really don't know exactly what I'm thinking.  He walks to each one, and even though he's well aware that he's being watched, he acts like he were so very much alone, because this would all be easier if he weren't being watched. 

But no sooner does that thought come and go (and it could certainly be enough to change a life, because anything that digs into the dirt of liberty can move mountains in a life), when the final version of her comes as a kind of a half-horse, as far as he can tell, and she's being ridden by someone just as interesting as herself, and it's not the most pretty thing he has ever seen, but not so far from it, either.

Someone, he can't tell who, one of the people involved in the scene anyway, someone of those, says, "It does take two to tango, but three is spectacular."

capitulato nombero oncei-oncei

I wake up in the cabana again.  It's been a long time, maybe a number of years, at least months.  I am waking up and I feel kind of terrible, one because it's been over for at least a year and I'm still waking up here, and two because I dreamed about this before I even met her and that means I might have made the whole thing up.  I would be okay with having made the whole thing up, except it seems like she's been involved for at least some of it, and that some of it made her life a living hell, because we know too many of the same people, and they talk.  And as time goes by, and more time goes by, she doesn't look so good in the big picture of things, she kind of looks a little bit insane and sad.

It's not like that's anything unusual, though.  In the time that I started chasing after the Eternal Feminine, I have become a little insane and sad myself, and maybe that has something to do with the moon, that my mother the moon takes us all down eventually.  And it just might be that eventually we all become insane and sad at the same time, in one of those ways that everyone wakes up at the same time, and looks at the clock when it's 11:11 at the same time, and it's magic. 

That fortune teller, the one with the barnacles on her clothes at the edges of the beach, I can see her in this dream where everyone wakes up, and she would say to me, "Wake up, it's 11:11," and I would wake up and look out on a beach covered with old lovers, and they would be naked like in a big Spencer Tunik exhibition, and they would be covered in an interesting smelling oil that would look interesting in the sun, and they would be saying interesting things like, "Wow, we are all just talking about how sorry we feel about everything and we would like to help you because we are angels in the flesh," and everything after part gets a little bit blurry and it's hard to think any further than that, and I am starting to have doubts about this 11:11 thing.

But I am having a lot of doubts these days.  My main doubt this morning is that anything good could come from waking up inside this cabana.  It's the one we always rented, La Bruja del Cobre and I, when we were taking our vacations on the beach.  None of this is a fantasy, at the core, it all is really happening in real time, except for the part about the vacations, because most of the time both of us do not have jobs at all. 

My doubt this time is that I can live here in this cabana, even for a little while, without falling backwards and falling in love with the things that are no longer here.  This is really all about falling.

I want to think that she is no longer here, either, but I see her here enough, visiting this same spot where we spent so many of our summer vacations (not really, but that sounds so civilized)  ((and it might make me much more attractive, especially to people who are looking for people with 401k plans, and I'm not saying I don't have one of those, but it was just recently that I found out that you didn't have to run that distance to start collecting money, money is so very interesting, isn't it?)).  And this time, I see her, because she is not here.  There are marks of sand in the shape of feet, like they were prints of feet, or perhaps they are called feetprints.  They look like marks left by the dead, and that makes sense, because we are both very close to the dead and that's why we found each other to begin with, and that's also why we lost each other but that's another story that still makes me very sad and it was my fault even though no one else seems to think so.

So her Muertos are still so very close, and they have her feet, and I miss her feet because they were terribly interesting.  There was a chain around one that could scratch you if it wanted to, and it often did.  And I miss running my hands along that chain.  And she's long gone, and has left with a very obvious trace, and it's sad except when I look outside the cabana, I see her there, standing and looking into the sea. 

I would like to say that I did not run when I saw her, but I always do, and my heart jumps in a way that is unusual for my heart, in that it seems like the murmur that she left me with, except it hurts just a little when it's related to seeing her, and I don't understand what that is about.  I run to her and when I catch up to her she isn't moving, she is stiff and her eyes are wide and she is staring at the sea with a vacant look.  This is a kind of catatonia I have seen before, from other lovers who are a little bit in love with death, and the thing that is the most familiar is that it is fake because I see her blink.  She sees me see her blink and the jig is up.  And the news is out.

And she says, "I want you to take me to the top of the stairs, but turn around before you get there."

"Why?" is the most reasonable question here so this is what I do say, in the form of a question.

"Because if you turn around, then I will freeze, I will turn into a pillar of salt, and then I can finally rest." 

This is very hard to hear, because I can see her face in another world, one that is not this one, where she is crying, but she can't allow herself to do that in this one because, because I don't know why because really.  Someone once did something that disappointed her, and she made a decision is because, I guess, but how should I know.  It's also very hard to hear because I know she is tired, and she should be tired, because things are a little harder for her than they need to be, but that's sometimes the way it is with the children of the graveyard.  It is also very hard to hear because it's the wrong story, she's not turning into a pillar of salt, this is the story where she gets lost in the underworld, and can never see Orpheus again and he doesn't get to see her, and it's very sad.  It's sad because she has the stories confused, and I can't correct her, not here, because that would be rude, and she would think I think she is a little bit stupid.  It's also sad because I turned around a long time ago and lost her a long time ago and I never would stop missing her, even though it was a long time ago.

And what's even sadder is that by now she has started to notice that I have a face painted on my back, and it's not her face, it's someone else's face altogether.  I feel like I have to explain, and because this could very well be a dream, there is also an equal chance that it is not, and that's the best place for me to try to explain things. 

The face, I explain, in this dream, is only appearing on my back because it is what I have been thinking about lately, and I think it's very good, because it makes me feel good to think about.  There was this moment when I lost things and then I found something, and it wasn't until it was a gorgeous storm for a few months and then the storm moved somewhere else (somewhere north, I think, a little north), and it wasn't until later that I realized this important thing.  And this important thing, I explained to the Bruja who wasn't made of salt even though she really wished she were, was this: I had been falling backwards into the world that looks very much like this one, courting and being courted by the Eternal Feminine, and this was suddenly one of her aspects that made questions out of her titles, because she was Temporary, and sometimes Feminine, and sometimes many other things besides, and even though I'd heard about this, I had never met anyone who could do it. 

Like anyone who has spent any time at the bottom of the sea, she was many of the things that she appeared to be, and many of the things that no one else could see, and by the time that I noticed that the sea monsters that were coming from out of her skirt and coat meant that she was as deep as the ocean, I had already started falling backwards, and that made me sad, because I lose everything that I fall for, at least up until right now.  There were also other things that I adored about her: that she had a collection of faces that matched my collection, and she also had so many more that I had not seen, and that meant that if we were ever trapped somewhere between time and space, we could be many things to each other and never get old.  I keep explaining these things to the Bruja, and now especially I am trying to explain how this is reminding me of my thumb, that what happened with this sea monster, or mermaid, or same thing, was like my thumb except it happened to my heart, like part of that got taken off, and it wouldn't come back.  But it didn't make me sad, I explain, because I think what happened to me also happened to her, and those parts are finding each other somewhere at the bottom of the sea, and they can speak when we can't find each other, and it's a beautiful story, I think, and this is what I explain.  And I don't know why I'm trying so hard not to cry and failing miserably, and this Bruja is also looking very sad, because, she says, I look like I may have fallen in love and it's not with her this time.  And I explain that, No it's just because there's a tattoo of a mermaid on my back that I look like I'm in love, she's only visible on my back because she is what I think about, and that doesn't mean anything.

It's not been the easiest morning, not by far, and I am more and more upset now when the Bruja is wiping the salt from her face, and is seated on a series of nine rocks, and she's seating me before her, and looking into my hands.

This Bruja, I wanted to be her lost lover forever, but before my eyes she has turned into something else altogether, and change is always hard.  She isn't reading the lines on my palm, she is lifting the skin off my bones like it were the skin of a piano on a beach, and she is reading the blood running through the veins.

La Bruja del Cobre is complaining about the cold, and wishing we had more of that soup I made for her a long time ago, and she is reading the blood running parallel to the bones in my hands.  "Everyone has their own alchemy, art, love, or money," she says, "and yours is love.  But you knew that already.  For other people it's art."  She is looking at my forehead and remembering something.  "For other people, maybe, there's a difference." 

orpheus descending

The scene begins with the daughter, at the foot of the stairs to the ocean, and she turns and she looks at the father and she says, "We have to go down, Daddy."
This ocean, this stair, this entry point is loaded, it's a loaded gun, a crossroads marked with white chalk and gunpowder, and to cross over means to be blown in a thousand directions at once.  I am terribly nervous about writing this scene, even now, or especially now, now that we're in the middle of it.  Because this point is a threshold that got crossed on a night that was too late and too cold to be naked, naked as children playing in the forest.  This point is a threshold, a place that got crossed on a day when things needed uncrossing, first at the river and then here, on this space, to get clean of all the thousand kisses in the depths of something that didn't know how to sustain itself.
Before we went down, I saw myself making the same masks of her face, papier mache masks that reflected every one of her nine images, I wanted to keep it holy, I wanted to keep it sacred, I wanted to keep it somewhere near the door to my place in the world, somewhere between desire and ecstasy, but something shifted on the way.  I found the masks I had made had all come to gather in front of my hands, like a ghost, like a sad and lonely ghost, and I never know what to do with these phantoms except to pull them close and try to kiss them, kiss the ghost, whisper hello and goodbye and hello, across lifetimes I recognize you.  Only this time the paper was growing thin and dry, and when I went to kiss the ghost, she crumbled in a thousand pieces and blew away like ash, and that was the only thing that I held that was worth keeping, the ashes of something that I would never really understand.
And I also understood that these things that I was holding from another lifetime ago, they were separating themselves by themselves, the dross from the gold, and my daughter was leading me into the underworld this time, because this time needed a child and not a lover to be the guide.
I watched her descend, she hadn't been here before, but she was Persephone hungry for pomegranite seeds, like the bee always knows exactly where to land (on the center of my head).  There's too much water here to see clearly, so I am just trying to remember these things when I remember them.  And when she got closer, and I could see that the waves were getting furious, the rocks begin to look like the bones of the dead.  We always get more afraid of death when we're close to coming back to life.
Now there are clouds and now there is rain and now there is a light flickering in the parking lot in the middle of a morning where I'm here and not there, and there is nothing that needs to be born in words, because it's in the middle of its own birth, and it's so close to death that it seems important to pay attention to everything.
The round crossing guard is wearing black and red, and there's something about to identify itself, where the breath on the neck is going to announce itself with a voice.
I know some things.  Some things about this place, some things about how I can watch the daughter playing on the lap of the sea, and I want to help her find shells that look like bones, but I'm stuck on the edges of the waves, eating sea foam and painting sea monsters with my hands.
That one, half this and half that but neither and both all at once, the one that shifts, is leaving traces and marks on every edge of every precipice, and I don't know if it's something I recognize across lifetimes or across oceans, because I am starting to suspect that this lifetime is the first time this has ever happened, and it catches us both by surprise. 
I left a part of myself, the ashes from my hands, at the edges of the doorway to the underworld, and now my hands leave marks that are from the living blood of this body, this body right now, the one that wants and the one that remembers and the one that doesn't know where all these parts are supposed to go.  The foam that runs through my blood is raining over my head, the foam that takes apart the things that are no longer necessary, and leaves the bones on the doorstep for another reconstruction, this foam is whirling at a thousand miles an hour, and there's no place to stand that feels like I won't be sucked under.  But I'm already under.  The feeling of falling comes strongest when I wake up, when I first wake up, because it takes that long for this body right now to remember that anything that feels like falling for that long is worth the time and attention.
And at the edges of the ocean, from the mouth of a cave, there's a boy that just left the center of the earth, and I remember her because I didn't ever stop thinking about her, and I don't know who she's supposed to be, and the same thing could be said for myself, except I think it might be whoever we want to be, as much as identities can create themselves in the middle of a storm on a winter night like this with the moon like this with the sea monsters gathering like waves like this, and I think I like it like this. 

driven

the skin of the car is shedding between here and there, and now i'm here, and the skin is gone, and all i can see is the shine of the car.  these things, the ones that were buried in the rocks and came to life, are still here, rising underneath my fingerprints like there were bones there singing songs, and the one song that i always heard is also still here, cinnamon stones telling the stories of the people who were here, and everything that was true is lit up by the moon, and everything that was not true is lit up by the moon, and it's bright enough to hear, and i'm almost drowned out by the ocean in my ears, relentless moon and ocean in my ears, and i think this place between places, i think i can call this home.

notes from the field

the writer reports in from real time:
the kind of night where i am finding myself trying to eat more than i did the meal before this one, feeling too much like a ghost and thinking it would be heavier if i were heavier, like i might not float away.  riding through cold streets, taking my little girl to a school concert - she's in concert black and wishing she could wear boots instead of velvet shoes, and the wind blows against her legs.  she is thin as a faerie on a night like this, but just enough to keep us all on the ground, riding into the wind and hoping we don't pick up the wrong kind of speed that could take us up.  it's not a good night for flying.  these last moons building up to this next one, coincidences and second chances are in the air, but i can't count them on my fingers, they float away with the tip of my thumb from another time altogether.  and if it weren't for her, i think i would float, that i would find myself floating, if i didn't have this spiral going through my lip.  it's a staple over my mouth, and i'm not sure what else is holding me together, but it might be that, with all of its multiple meanings, hooks and mermaids and locks on secrets, closets that hold more flesh than bone, and it doesn't matter if i am trying to fall apart, because this is keeping things together, just enough to remember how to do these things, with cold hands and a heart that wants to be anything but heavy on a night like this, weighing down and waiting and making things with my cold hands, watching for signs of what designs this moon is trying to call up from the depths of the ocean.