007
1.
Hottest afternoon in a while. I spent it deliberately aimless, trying to relocate my life in art. Relieved myself of a hundred bucks at the bookstore, finding an excess of what I’d been seeking; paths toward the word, light to drink like medicine.
At this time of day my favorite spot on this side of town is gruesomely touristy, yet beautiful, offering views of water and land. I am sitting off to the side, the dirty half-waves undulating, flecked with feathers, candy bar wrappers, a banana peel. O brave world becoming newer, and with that, more burdened, more peopled and stuffed, unable in every way to disregard the overlapping of presence.
2.
Reading Mei-mei Berssenbrugge— how she speaks of nature and human experience, steeping the particular within the ubiquitously pervasive, flora and fauna and humanity and cosmos as entire, ever-deepening, interdependent worlds.
I am thinking of the translation of reality into poems, the telling of a story twice or once or not at all. I am writing while living today, and still the sensations are noticeably distinct.
Now little someones are rustling in the dry grass. Mice, maybe. They’re so fast. No, I think they’re birds, making nests closer to the ground.
Anyway, an addict would envy the easy calm of my first-in-a-while cigarette— how enveloped you can get by a thing when you cease keeping distance.
When I smoke I smoke these yellows because they’re what Jim Carrey smoked in the documentary about the movie about Andy Kaufman; the man who blurred the lines of comedy, reality, appropriateness, art, performance, in that particularly fascinating way.
The other book I’m reading now is one that a new friend recently recommended. I don’t have any original intentions in my body, only so many bones. (haha.)
3.
Okay, fine. let’s get into it. Meditations on strangerhood. The incapacity we have of not only knowing everyone around us, but also of knowing completely and correctly those that are the closest.
This line from “Turquoise Shade” by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge:
Even for separated persons, some properties of their particles become linked, such as earth and animals.
This piece, “AIR TALK” by Yoko Ono:
It’s sad that the air is the only
thing we share.
No matter how close we get to each other,
there is always air between us.
It’s also nice that we share the air.
No matter how far apart we are,
the air links us.
And this poem that reduced me to unexpected tears when I encountered it, late night, in the blue light, “To a Stranger” by Walt Whitman:
Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you, You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me as of a dream,) I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you, All is recall’d as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured, You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me, I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not yours only nor left my body mine only, You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass, you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return, I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone, I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again, I am to see to it that I do not lose you.
4.
To be looked past is not the opposite of being looked at. Like light, there are spectrums in everything. Sometimes I stare attraction right in the face, to ‘see what will happen.’ Other times I forget that other people should make me feel so attracted, intrigued.
And yes, I think of distance not as a liminal or blurry or wicked thing but as the way our living does its work. Here, the sun is still out, but it’s dark back home on the east coast. Nothing dismal about it. Everything has its right place.
My experiences, up to a certain recent point in time, were cobbled around a bruised core of absence. Now, I don’t remember how to miss anything I’ll see again, whether in this or another life.
Gone bird on the pavement, will you fly over the place in which I’ll eventually do my own going? Gone friend in the wind, is that you singing along with me to our old favorite songs— those soundtracks of past lives, rendered anew in every subsequent present?
August 6 2023
p.s. Breaking the 4th wall again.. hello. It’s August 7th now. I have to be real, I am nervous! I wanted to write letters, probably subconsciously in lieu of diary entries (I’ve stopped writing in there since I started this) or text conversations with friends (rarer than ever). But at what point is it all too real, an inundation of cyclical thoughts and words and feelings, a disclosure of things better left private, disseminated to several known and unknown others? Are you reading into me, reporting back, learning too much? Should I be more thoughtful so as to remain comfortably obscure?
Part of me says it doesn’t matter. These days I’m less afflicted by the fear of being known. It’s less of an ordeal and more of something I could take or leave. (And sometimes, shockingly, I choose take!) But I also have to try my best to avoid doing myself the disservice of repeatedly constructing a space in which I can be misunderstood, especially in such intimate ways. Well, maybe that’s not even the worst possibility.
What if you understand me perfectly but disagree with my ‘things’ .. my decisions or lifestyle or gendersexualityblahblah or spiritual woowoo creativity-as-religion bullshit or my true love of being alone? I don’t care what they think, but I care what you think. By reading this, you’ve become you. My reader. My witness. My sheathed knife.
Don’t get me wrong— I do leave things out. Misery is literary but mental illness pushes people away. Maybe I’m being presumptuous, sure, but this format demands it. You’re not a stranger. You are you. I keep telling you who I am and hoping you take it kindly. It’s an exercise in existing less secretively, an attempt to make sure I’m documenting my life despite this recent whiplash of changes.
Anyway, poetry is happening to me again. Finally I’m making time to really read poems. And input begets output. Fragments have been pouring out like dirty water, but word by word, they get more clean. Aah!
Maybe this will mean a return to form here— more analysis than confession, more providing than sharing. I’m not sure.
But in any case, thank you for sticking along for these experiments.
<3 Bee