back to the sea

There's this.
Something about storms that bring the ocean into my house, the one I carry with me, the one that has rooms I don't even know about yet, the one that has rooms of memory and nostalgia and longing and hope, the one that holds children, dogs, lovers, and spaces for meals where you have to eat on the floor to be closer to the ancestors.
I am at the edges of the sea, and this is the place to be ending a year and starting another one, the edges of a ghost sea, the one that used to be here before the land rose up and made it look like a desert.  There's magic here, and ghosts here, and the whole place is made for ghosts, but it's also made for dancing.
The difference between our gods and theirs is that our gods like to eat, and like to dance.
Without dancing, without the drums, there is no way to look into the red eye of god.
And there's more than one hooded figure here with me, definitely more than one, and it seems like I should be believing by now that I don't have to enter into this next place alone, but I don't believe it, because it feels very much alone.  My feet are loose on the ground and my eyes are clear in the night wind and I can see all that I am supposed to see, and that's enough.
I don't understand the half of it, what that last year was all about, what the next year might mean, what anything that anyone told me recently might mean, I don't think I'm supposed to think about any of that very much.
This is the edges of the sea, and who knows what this means, or what happens here, I like the feeling of this wet wind in my lungs.

Love potion #8 (&1/2)

It was becoming harder to blow anything like life into the animal metaphors, they were becoming ridiculous, as if we were starting not to believe in each other any more.  I started off the year as a dog, and ended it as a horse, absolutely, but not entirely, if such a thing were possible.  Instead of being the one who can run freely back and forth across the dividing line between the living and the dead, I was one who carries, one who is mounted, one who has to respond when they are called.  It was bigger, a much bigger role than the year before, and there was more limits to my movement, but there was also a sense that this sense of place would give me more freedom than I had ever imagined.  Eventually.  I wish I could say I found it all on my own, but it happened the way it always does:  I am sleeping, someone calls me, and by the time I wake up and answer, she is sleeping.  Sometimes we wake up in time, but usually we wake up when it's already too late.

The boy in me wanted to improve his reflexes, to narrow the gap between call and response, and I found myself waking up earlier and earlier, turning my body leaner and more graceful, more like a horse than a dog.  The adult in me just goes along, pretty certain that closing the gap won't make a fucking difference to anyone for anything.  If the soup is only ready for a short amount of time, maybe it's better if we don't eat.

"Kikiribu Mandinga, Kikiribu Mandinga," is a coincidence, a video of a woman dancing her way into the head of a drunk, or just one of my muertos come teasing, trying to wake up something I'm swallowing, because if it opens up my mouth won't stop, and I don't know what my mouth wants to do right now.  I'm stuck somewhere between high school and that soft poetry that happens on a couch in the middle of a grey day when the house is warm, but the muscles in my chest keep emptying and filling with blood, and this is more like magic than anything simple.  It's possible that everything that has to do with falling in love is a kind of bewitching.  Always a spell, always an enchantment, someone is doing something they are powerless over, and when it's better (or much worse), it happens to two at once (or three).

I can never tell the difference between the image and the reflection, and I'm more aware to the idea that both of these things are where everything gets lost, and it might not matter if there is a difference, practically speaking.  I have a perfect love somewhere in me, and by the time it reaches my head, it's way too many other things to make any clear decisions.  Sometimes the best thing to do is to keep waking up in the morning, that gives me the chance to see if these things are still true for me.  Most mornings I wake up and my house is wide open, the doors unlocked and the windows blowing through with cold air, all the ghosts are still here.

Love stories that end in pornography are the ones we always really want, but are afraid to say out loud, where the couple rolling around in the waves eventually get carried away, and the clothes are gone and the line around the belly becomes the central point in the adventure.  Those stories that play out in real time almost seem enough to take away the pain of the love stories that end with one or the other lying awake at night, alone or with another lover, wondering suddenly if they might have missed something.

And that's where my stories stop, and I would like it if they stopped stopping right there, with that sudden turn at the top of the trail, looking back only to realize that the one that got left behind has already turned into a pillar of salt, and there's only a road ahead.  I like to think that there might be one last thing we could say to each other that might make the story turn, so I try, I always try, but my mother is one who destroys utterly, where there are only endless combinations of traces, notes and lipstick stains to puzzle over while the next story is starting.  I would like to think that we get second chances, but we rarely ever do, and they even more rarely come when someone is waiting and hoping for it.

I also like to think that you can't lose someone too many times, that eventually we wake up somewhere a little older, and realize that we have a chance.  But I've woken up plenty, and gotten older plenty, and understand now that I tend to lose the same people again and again, and I'm lost to the same people who don't want to lose me again and again, and on some nights it seems funny, and on others it's the worst pain in the world.  This isn't hard, but it is impossible.

"Everyone thinks they love differently, and in more complicated ways, than the rest of the world, as if anything about this can be original.  Everyone thinks they reinvented it."
"I know," I said, "I meet them all the time, and it's impossible."
"Them?" she said, "I'm talking about you."

I was trying to keep my eyes on the road up ahead.  I thought about how she said this looked promising, and that sounded right, and I wanted to be able to feel what it might be like to feel like something up ahead was promising.  But I was aware now more than ever that the tightness in my belly and the dryness in my skin meant that I was either bracing or being braced, for something large.  I knew it was going to be dangerous, but I also knew it was bound to be beautiful, and if I could have told her all the secrets about the ground beneath our feet, I would have, but she would have to believe me.  And we live in a time when we don't believe each other.

It was very hard to tell if this were sunrise or sunset, and even though I had plenty of ways to find out, I decided that just for now it was probably better not to know for sure.  It looked like I was ending the year in the same shape in which I began it, a little restless, a little beat up, and very hungry but not ready to eat.  I wasn't unaware that I kept losing the same person over and over again, and my heart was no less tired that it ever was before.  I also wasn't unaware that I kept meeting the most beautiful person in the world, and every time I lost her, I got closer to telling her what she was waiting to hear in this life.  It was not my favorite place, but that was me at my best.  Close, on the verge, ready to burst, that painful intercession between the thing that wants and the thing that knows, it made for sweet music whenever I was in between things.  But in that particular moment, it was too much, much too strong, like the open vein of the earth where the lava flows through; that, she said, is what makes the poet drunk, makes the dancer lose their footing, makes the one who counts the moments of time lose their ability to speak, and takes the breath away from the prayer.

So if I keep looking for her, then I'm a fool, but if I stop looking, I'm a coward, and I've never been able to stay not brave for very long.  She matches the holes in my favorite shirt, the space between my teeth, the space between two pairs of shoes wrapping around each other awkwardly in a car on a cold night by the ocean.  She has plenty of faces, and plenty of names, but there are some I'm more drawn to than others, and anyone who understands reflections like that, anyone who knows how to weigh hearts, and anyone who can understand that one of the most gorgeous things in the world is to wake up and realize that you are no longer changing your mind about this, knows what it's like to lose something, and that's the one I want to keep.  

she hates the smell of sperm: a love story

plot: odysseus is on an island, and his battery is running out, but he's still texting this one woman because, well, we all know why because...

writing with salt

this might need to be covered with salt, and i hope it's to seal it, not close it.  those are different things.  there is a difference between a spell and a work, and i can't talk about that.  there are too many secrets here, too visible on the surface of things, that anyone who knows the signs and knows how to work with salt and skin can decipher clearly.  it's not been coded carefully enough, and the ends are all left untied.  biology is messy, and there's never any good way around the mess unless you decide not to live in a body, and i promised the angels that surrounded me when i was singing in the crib that i would never make such a decision.
i know that it's a story that could end, and it could already be ended, closed and sealed and wrapped, and found years later when our feet are no longer making marks in the dirt right here.  and i know that it's a story that could unfold, and decode itself like secret numbers in the air, that only we get to see, numbers that hold the secrets to some distant sunrise that only we'll know.  but i also know that it's a story, it's already a story, and i like this story very much.
it has all the things i like, furtive glances, cold fingers that are shaking, mango, cream, and hot spice, and a thousand ingredients from a place with a thousand revolutions, charms and works and a beautiful girl with a sharp mind and an agile tongue, and the ghosts of fireflies from fields somewhere on the east coast.  and a conversation that starts somewhere in september and keeps winding itself through all the branches of days in between then and now.
that's the foreground.  in the background there are sea monsters, family members who are physically and mentally sick, dogs that get lost in the other world, lovers who try to come back, and a recurring theme with dead owls.
and there are destinies that are shifting and taking radical new turns in all of this, subways in new york city and stage lights and projections that we're still not sure of, because we don't know if they really work or not.
and i talk to the stars, one who is given to projecting and projection, and having come out of a long period of mourning for the things that i cannot see, and doubt for the things i can.  having recently come to my senses, rocked awake by the ghosts of another world back to my senses, i see these curious threads that are open on the ground at my feet, and understand some things.
i wish i could give away the ending, but i don't know anything about the ending, all i know is what i've known all along, that this is something that i want.  i was given a chance, to lose everything i no longer needed, and to sit empty in a room and wait for something to happen, and i didn't think anything would happen, i found myself in the room, and i didn't think anything would happen.
and it didn't matter that my faith was somewhere else, a circle opened and i was asked to say out loud all the things that i was looking for in someone i would meet, someone i would want to know, someone who could turn me inside out and make me lose my footing.  and i didn't know a name, but i knew there had to be something about being capable of falling to pieces and capable of being put back together.  and i didn't know a place of origin, but i had ideas, i know what i like, and i know what languages make me want to forget how to sleep.  and i didn't know a voice, and i didn't know anything about the voice, but i had a feeling i would know it when i heard it, and when i heard it, it would wake me up the rest of the way.
and i was told that this was true, that this would come true, and that i wouldn't believe it, but it would be true, and i would keep doubting that it was true all while it was unfolding, but it would still be true, and that it didn't matter if i believed or not, because it was true, that it was outside of my control.
and i said, "oh," because i wanted them to think i heard them, and think i believed them, and i didn't.  but i remembered what they said.  so september came around and i had a feeling there was something important happening, and i wasn't sure i believed it, but by the next month i believed it, it had everything to do with the voice, and it stopped me short, and i said, "oh," and that.is why.the story.begins.with.an.O.

intertextuality

I think this might look kind of totally insane, but hold on, just hold on a second.
Oh my gosh please hold on.
This is a prototype for an idea of an inkling of an expenditure for a performance...
This guy, this Alejandro Cesarco guy, this artist I saw in Chelsea, sparked some things in me.
And I think I want to rethink how I use text in my work, completely rethink it, and think of the text not only as text as an art form as text (the pleasure, hahaha, joissance, of the words in their semiological construction), but as an art form in a more visual sense--the look of the words, the crossing out, the erasures that are only partial, the drawings, the things left out, the misspellings, the excesses of the text that spill onto the page, so that the page is a surface* to capture desire. (*filter?).
And so there's this:

And questions about whether or not desire is a radically phenomenological experience, if it is the radical possession of the body (radical because it grabs the root chakra), or an empirical experience that always already necessitates a new taxonomy.  I feel as though if I say ontology that could turn this into either the sexiest thing ever written, or the most pretentious.  Maybe those are the same thing.

And the only way I could ever feel comfortable about writing as a desiring subject is through radically subjective experience, which might just be another word for method acting.  Jajaja, that's ironic.  Me, a method actor, even after all of that other stuff in all those cities and after all those years.  I cannot play a smoker unless I am smoking.

Please refer to the goddam dirty war in Argentina in the 1970s, the one in Chiapas in the 1990s, and the one in the U.S. up until the day we widely accepted at least six categories of gender, for more background on this.  For background on the mouth, that is absolutely none of your business, but thank you for coming.  Gracias por venir.  This is the blood that flows in the veins.  Gracias por venir, or rather, Je viens.  

write over this with salt

(a palimpsest before the smoke)

the spring of disguised vultures gave way to a summer where blackbirds marked our feet with chalk,
and coated our hands with red clay, so that we would leave traces.  and when i was listening to stones speak, i lost everything when i forgot to tie things to myself, but in truth i was already too heavy to carry any of it.  and in the morning, that yellow goddess came to me with three dreams that would come true, but the summer had to wait.  it was not pregnant, and it was not empty, but there were caves being created in my chest while the things in my head were being erased.  and when i left the ocean, i was erased.

the fall of broken dogs gave way to winter very reluctantly, they left their traces on our necks, they left their traces on our backs, and they wanted to tell us all the things we didn't want to hear.  we were marked, ultimately, permanently, not by what they left on us, but by what they could not leave with us, their hearts too worn to travel in this world any longer, not yet ready to travel in any other, and so they occupied the spaces in between, and we were too busy, brushing our teeth, sorting out the things in our pockets, to notice that the world was about to become a little bit emptier.

the winter came, and when the winter came, the animals pretended to be sleeping, so that we might finally have the chance to say the things we were supposed to say to each other.  but when we started speaking, all our animal languages started to fall out of our mouths, and everything that seemed so complicated before was removed when it moved into the realm of animal language.  our coats would not be enough to keep us warm, we would have to find other ways, and we couldn't settle for anything less, and the world kept getting colder, wondering what we would need as proof that we heard each other, louder and bolder than our stylish jackets.

falta

the night got cold and wet and it was not our fault.
everything that we had borrowed was places in bags and was waiting by the door while we slept.
and the trees were still waiting for us outside, hoping that we would wake up soon.
this was far, a night spent far away, and the night went on for months, and at the end i couldn't remember what it was like not to miss you.
there was a lack that opened up when i met you, something larger than i had suspected, and larger than i would still let on, even at the end of all the time spent inside, waiting for the wind to change.
and in between, there were hopeful words, and i thought they meant waiting for you, and maybe they do, but they also taught me how to wait for something with hope.
it's a strange season, one where sea monsters keep trying to find their way into my fingertips, and tell me in dreams that we missed something important back there.
but we didn't miss a thing.
because while we were sleeping the things of the desert continued to grow, waiting to surprise us on one morning.
and you brought sweet music to my ears when i couldn't see past all the speaking subjectivities and the impossibility of signs.
and you taught me how to cherish something that i couldn't put into words.
and the night gets colder and wetter, and i can't find my things, not in time, not in time to get out the door.
and i'm pulled back to the bed where sea monsters sing me the same story, about the hundred ways i want you, and the hundred things that are still between us.
and the gypsy spirit who keeps me writing secrets that are no more, no less innocent than a dance that plays in time.
and i'm distracted by the hundred lines i forgot to write, by the slant of the words you remembered to write, and all the things that still remain unsaid.
and that same lonely song about wanting to know someone from the inside out.
and theories about what a revolution would mean on this ground.
and the weight of the burden to turn a life of longing into something like art, an act of loving to flatter the art of loving, and the things we could speak, the ways we could speak each other back out into the cold and wet morning, a potion for the tongue, something to untie it, something that works like a charm.

oh that

that moon, that last one, was a monster of a moon and moved things in all directions, and all those ghosts moved out of the way, just in time for me to lose my sense of smell, and i can't remember a thing, except the things i wondered about before the monster moon came in and did what she did to the cards i was holding...and i can't tell all the faces in my hands, but there are suddenly a lot more than there were just a week ago, and the most interesting ones have requests, and my nose is stuck not smelling, and my body is growing itchy from letting everything grow to protect me from the cold...it didn't work, i'm cold and cannot smell and i think that will be okay, because for all the things that moved, there's this, this one thing, this one small thing that i've been trying to ignore, just one small thing that i've been trying to ignore that's waiting for me to pay it some attention, but i think i need to smell first, and i need a shave first, and there's something, i think there's something you should probably know.

colden

& the one with barnacles on her legs and seaflowers in her hair was sitting at the foot of my bed, poring over a list, getting wet with the sea in her hair, and scented with the flowers she carries there.
and she said, these are the things that will happen to you, and these are the things that won't happen to you, and i couldn't tell which was which, because the words had gotten wet, but she said she knew and that was all that mattered.
& i wanted to know so much more than she wanted to tell me, i wanted to know so much more than this.
she asked why i had black oil on the bottom of my boots, & i said i was just traveling, to a city i wanted to visit again for a very long time, but i had no way of getting there.  & i told her how i told my friend that i wanted to go, and in a few days, i had a reason & a way to get there.
& she said, that's how it is with witches & sorcerers.
& i told her i didn't know if that was what it was, i wasn't really very witchy, i was just lucky.
& she said, no.sir.you.sir.are witchy if i ever saw it if i do say so myself.
it was a very short morning, it went too fast, & she always looked disappointed when i started to gather my things, but this morning was different.
she said that she heard me talking about the things i look for in a goddess who can guide me, & that she had all those particular qualities, & that she was coming with me.
& i didn't believe her, because i am learning that it's ok not to believe, because the things that will happen whether you believe in them or not, that it doesn't have anything to do with who we think we are, what we think we want, or what we say we believe.
& the days are heavy with cold, and the days are golden with light, and the things that i used to think got stuck in the cracks in the sidewalk outside of my old apartment in nyc.
when i lived there, i felt like the place could bring me back to life, but i didn't know it would take so many years before that happened, and when it did happen, i just tell myself i don't believe it, but i know that i'm not right, i'm just not right at all, & that comes as terribly good news.

first thing you need to know

I had a dream that I fell in love with you.
And I think I just haven't woken up yet.

almost december

I woke up with three spirits made of white light trailing around my head, on the right (from the actor's point of view), and I said to them, "I think I am going to have to put everything that we've been talking about on hold, because there's this list I have to do, these things I have to make, these things to put out of my head and onto some other surface so other people can see them.  I think it all has to be on hold.  These things that live inside my head, I think they have to go to sleep inside my head, and rest, or fall asleep for a lot longer than I would have wanted, because I have this list, and those things inside my head, I think they only live inside my head, and they very well might live in other heads at the same time that they live in mine, but I don't know that, and if I don't know that then maybe they're not real."

Is exactly what I said (more or less).

((It probably was nothing like that at all)).

And the three spirits of white light around my head said, "No."

They said, "No, you are wrong, but it might be easier for you to think that you're right, just because you like it when the narration changes inside your head, because that makes you feel like you're moving forward, but this is all moving forward whether you know it or not, and it really doesn't matter if you know it or not anymore."

I wanted this resolved, however, because it was too much to resolve.  I wanted a new story, not because these stories weren't interesting any more, but because all of the characters in these stories are tied, their hands are tied, and there's nothing that anyone can do, and in times like these, I would much prefer to leave them altogether, because I have a habit of waiting in a room where nothing is happening for much too long, and by the time I leave, nothing has been happening for so long that the figures have turned from flesh into magazine pin-up versions of what they were, and the pages are so worn that I can't even see the sparks in the eyes, and the faces look like they are disappointed in me, and sorry for me because I waited for so long when there was nothing to wait for.  This is how I have learned how to respond when my hands are tied for a very long time.  This is how I respond when I watch someone who's hands are tied for a very long time.

But they said, "No, because in this case, you are wrong, especially about that one, and now you just have to wait because it's cycling, and you can't really know what the cycle even is until you go through it, but you won't be alone."

I didn't want to admit that I really just didn't want to be alone for another New Year's Eve, and I was hoping that I could leave just long enough to find a date for New Year's Eve.  And I'm getting tired of my own narrator, the one who stays in the same story for too long, and longer, way after there is nothing left to tell in the story.

But they kept repeating that this story is the one that I wanted to be in for a very long time, and it would not unfold smoothly, but it would unfold beautifully, because I put it in a boat in the river, and the river knows what to do with the wishes of solitary lovers who have been sprinkled with glitter from the moon when they are asleep and dreaming.

There was a dog.  Before today, there was a dog.  It belonged to the Boy I take care of, a beautiful dog who was already old, and I understood that something miraculous was going to take place that day.  I also understood that this was the day that I was going to see the Boy, and visit the dog, and that this would not be the last time I saw the Boy, not at all, but that after today, the dog would not be there, and I didn't want to say goodbye.

But you have to say goodbye, because that is the cycle, and it's not up to me to decide where we are in the cycle, and when the dog has to go, she will just go, and it's up to me to be there and say goodbye, and that's what I would have to live through.  And before I said goodbye to the dog, there was advice, and the advice was, "Maybe you don't have to understand anything right now, there's enough going on in your life that you no longer have to understand, because it's something that's just happening to you right now, and you can understand it later on."  But the advice didn't come to me, it came from my mouth, and I was saying it to someone who has been in my head for a very long time, it came out of my mouth but I think the three spirits of white light were speaking it because they were using me.

And so it's like that.  And maybe it's something miraculous.  Because the room inside my head is not the same room I woke up in, but I've suspected I would be in this room for a long time, I was just not sure when that would happen, or when it would happen to me.

And I'm not broken or lost in this room, it seems like a place I would like to get to know, and there's room for these things to wake up, and there's room for me to avoid putting my restlessness into their faces and tell myself they are disappointed and too restless to hear what we might have to say to each other.  And I suspect that the things we have to say to each other will be very loud in the bigger picture of things, and that this room is made for those things to be spoken out loud.  But I can't know them tonight, all I can know is that it's not up to me to understand, but to stay in the room.  My eyes are too cloudy from crying over a dog that I will miss.  There is always a dog or a cat who has to leave before a story can start, and it's not up to me why that is, I'm only tracing patterns in the dirt with my foot, and wishing for something in the dark, even if I forget that the river knows everything, because the moon already told her, and we get to live in these rooms lit by moonlight, glitter in our eyes and something very loud that's waiting to be spoken.