rain on the skylight. nothing dripping in. wind, blowing the stars around--but it is not a hot summer night on the hood of a car laying out, looking up, getting a moon tan--it is 10:39 am on a saturday--a selfish portrait saturday--with art to be moved around and wind blowing the palm leaves and the studio window full, full, full of cold and blowing bits. it is cold and blowing--huffing--puffing january wind. and i am here, inside, watching it--under covers--with the glow of the skylight--the grey white skylight filtered rainy day light dripping its windy drops splattering on something overhead. i am here. i am inside. yesterday i was outside. walking in new shoes. gifted for the shoe project from my friend, virdell vonstrologist. i wore them sockless--these kind of platform mary jane's that seem like a defiant impossibility--how will i wear them down? the kenneth cole conservative oxblood brown heels from the good will, one plastic heel much shorter from than the other, such that i walked like one leg was longer than the other, until i began to feel it in my spine--these met their death in the round bin beside the grand grandmother of a what kind of tree is it when the bark curls and falls off in long sheets of hair? i have helped them cross over. it is all what it is now. yesterday i walked the first blisters into arising from the new shoes--pain, always a part of transition--and i loved the wet walk from one friend to the next in the rich discovery of the hills and concrete steps of the san francisco experience. i am encountering the city. i am moving through it from place to place. i am arriving. i am departing. i am learning how to disembark. i am learning how to let go of things, people, practices. life is interesting--as it travels in the new shoes. new hair is growing from my same old head--but that head, the shape of that head, the skull of that head, the eyes in the skull of that head--these are seeing the same things differently. differently seeing same seeking what? exactly? the differently seeing same. i suppose. differently abled seeing. i have been gone a long time--on a long, strange, totally real trip of tripping in and out of wow.....
we cut up the tree. we hack off the branches and talked about what needs talking about between us and he bundles what has been cut off after i place the shaft of unbranched tree in the bathroom, next to the bat of maureen--next to the space of time and place and life and love and wonder. we walk the excess to the trash cans. we put tree parts in the garbage. we put boxes in the recyling. we continue. i carry a broom with me to sweep. it feels good in my hands. i sweep down the staircase--it is the first time in may, june, july, august, september, october, november, december, january, february, march, april, may, june, july, august, september, october, november, december, january that i have done it. i did other things. what were they? organized spaces. manipulated objects. changed the shape of things in the air. provided the weather in predictable intervals. every three weeks i am an extraordinary bitch in a way i have never been so free to be in my whole life. menopause. i am not having a very easy time of it--nor is anyone who lives with me in these menstrual months of madness.
i scooped up the excess--the needles and the cat hair and the dirt worn into the grooves of the cement floors of this place. i put them in the box. i threw everything away.
in the outside world the sun is shining, the rain is drying from the sidewalks heating up the asphalt under the pounding sounds of wet. now, the skylight is lit with half shadow--but no more sounds of wetness are coming down from the ceiling. no crazy, wild, oya wind is blowing the palm tree branches. what is done, is done. the hatchet has been buried in the stump of what is no longer tree, metaphorically at least. i am here now. now, i return to the words that type themselves out of my fingers. i put them down--these strings of symbols glistening in the eyes of an unknowable reader.
the writer, it seems, at best, can only know herself. and then, only through writing. the writing makes the written visible and then can be encountered as exhale--as out of the body. the reader is forever drinking in. what sprit are they drinking? wines and spirits. can you taste the choices of hemmingway? i never read anything he wrote all the way through. i can't drink his drink of man and war and blood and endlessness. what drink was that, exactly? what was jong drinking? i can drink her in all the way through. and i can drink in anzaldua and ee cummings and for the time being and whatis her name, anyway? the bookshelves are always the telling places. i love bookshelves, of course. my library dwindling, dwindling as i give my books away. what happens to fiction when writers stop drinking? when they trend toward bottled water declaring its purity. what is this reeses peanut butter cup eating woman ever going to say that isn't full of refined sugar and its after effects?
i am here. typing strings of symbols. sounding like sounds that get tapped into endlessness. a keyboard is important to me. i need something to press myself up against--even if it is one keystroke at a time, it is still touch. there is touching going on. i am touching something. my fingerprints are leaving themselves on the hardened oil beneath them. one fingerprint of endlessness poking down on whatever letter the letter is. ohhhhhhhhhhhh, to receive real letters. today, perhaps, i shall try and write some.
i love what i miss most of all. the missing pieces are where all the longing lives. it is something to ache toward what is remembered as whole and real and funny. i construct such thick pieces of plexiglass to separate my before and afters. how does it work? to break down walls in such a way that something and someone can still get through....
where are you that makes me laugh???? like laughing???? not like cosmetics? oh, sweet laugh lines, do your precious thing. there are worry lines from scrunching scorn and swallowing pride. i never liked to swallow, but spitting out i liked even less. where does the excess go to when it is no longer planted in holy ground?
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