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1.
tai chi in business clothes. splaying fist, maybe a watch. a dragonfly’s flying pattern. black dog in green grass running. the longing look of its owner, half-focused. treefingers by radiohead. medium philtered soul with (too much) cream. late morning. thinking of the possible.
usual bench in usual park inexplicably splattered with water. the next bench instead. the slight difference in familiar perception. hearing: gulls and the bay and the wind in the trees and voices and motors.
the park gets repeatedly frozen in pictures, lasting a while. the pictures i took when i first came here, memories of june. june’s become august. one whole summer of this, and so soon. some hellish fragments but mostly rotations of walk, park, coffee, write, read, listen, be.
you did not drop into my life fully formed, from a void. catch me up on all those years of forming. provide to me the context of yr bright and famed existence; famous to me by virtue of not knowing, inexplicably beloved.
now i notice dew on the grass, the childlike flowers. now someone’s blasting james brown. he is saturday music i think. so it’s apt. and it’s a cool and sunny day.
sometimes i catch glimpses of my face in reflections and can’t believe how stoic it is. what with all this bursting inner joy. sometimes i’m told i can’t be read. you decide if that’s paradox, irony, failure, or joke.
my heart sinks when mitski sings “today i will wear my white button down.” i know the feeling. i wanted to be careful and pure, “relieved that i left my room tidy.” goodbyes we turned into see you later, when the transforming becomes surviving becomes enough.
in a week i’ll be twenty-four. in a week i’ll learn whether or not it means anything to me. another rotation. what should be a chance.
i am wearing small hoop earrings today, sacrificing my right not to be gendered woman. these days i want to be a woman more than ever. a girl, at least. so why can’t i? tell me, is that paradox, irony, failure, or joke?
the plan is to sit here a while, then run errands. most excitingly, to pick up my new keyboard from the music store. money doesn’t buy happiness but it buys creative tools, five dollar coffees with too much cream, unlimited use of public transportation every month— god damn. i love this life.
i say it to anyone who’ll hear me. i love this life. i love this life. i love this life.
2.
yesterday staring into the sun i felt so magically human— or humanly magical. it was a sky-colored sun, like a hole in the universal fabric. like the doorway at the end of the truman show. like something yoko ono would instruct you to perceive in a SKY PIECE or SUN PIECE or LOOKING UP PIECE or PERFORMANCE FOR THE ACQUISITION OF MORTAL COGNIZANCE. the headache afterward was worth it. i had seen the edge of the end of all things & wanted more than anything to stay, awed & earthly, exploring unalone. wanted, really, to ensure that there was no opening gesture, no falling even briefly, even beautifully into all that unimaginable space.
August 5 2023