When We Name It, Life Exists (So Many Gifts)
March 25-31 / Nightmares & Morning Pages / Title taken from William Carlos Williams
3/25: A melting world like drip drip drip. Icebergs jump off roofs and land like glass smashed. Pieces of my life are coming together in that unreal way they do. I don’t know how to trust it. Icicles knock at my door like stranger, kicking snow off boots, not saying hello. This fear that is also excitement, excitement closer to love. The world is once again shaking off the cold.
Is it still green under there? I am salt of the Earth, spread up and down the driveway. I am ovulating and wearing white, feeling Oedipal on a sunny afternoon, I have spent it all w/ words. Soon, a season of mud and I am thirsty.
T & I have been watching cave divers lately. Experts and amateurs, explorers and rescuers, fatal and lucky. In caves, when something goes wrong, you know you’re dead - close to the bottom already. Big holes in the ground. They fill w/ rain and flood. They break off into disparate pieces. You become unreachable down there. You pack a mask. You pack oxygen. You pack explosives. No matter what, you become bones, shimmying up against Earth herself. Cracking and shifting, deep deep down as far as these things go. The way the earth is constantly changing. Caves grow w/ each groan, digging deep deep down towards center.
T looks fascinated and I’ve got fear on my face when I ask, you wanna do this? And I love him when he says, well no, not if I wasn’t ready. T and I are on a brownie kick, too. Chocolate all over, brown like dirt. Clay on his boots and on my jeans on the floor w/ the other half-worn things. All brown. I can’t help but love brown, reminds me of family, dark hair dark eyes and a tan.
I’ve got to be honest, I forgot fear was the opposite of love. I thought I could keep using fear as a fort piled high on the edge of a beach, all stones from the shore.
I have been misusing fantasy for years. Today, I dripped w/ the world by the light of the sun and rid myself of something - like joy or dream or fantasy, the thing I never allowed for me. Alone, I let myself love and I proved it to myself, proved I could listen, proved I was after pleasure, not punishment. I became softer, lily petals in a summer rain, panting.
I am only lightning, trying to see what lights up when I hit the dirt. I know Truth because I tear up every time. It hides underneath pleasure and holds pain in its mouth. I don’t fear loss, for I can love forever. I have become so forgiving lately, finding my poetry again, right here in the dirt where I left it.
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3/26: My father wore the chains first and all his charms - mano cornuto both the hand and the horn, Mother Mary, the Superman symbol, all gold. My father was the first man I knew who wore a necklace and wore his hair long, who loved w/out knowing what to say about it. He’s been a voice across the water the last decade, both of us pretending to be strong, both of us pretending to be weak. I texted him late late last week and he messaged back in the morning and I have left it hanging in my phone like a white flag I’m still not ready to wave. I look in the mirror and talk to him there until I can adjust the necklaces around my throat and walk in my city like maybe this is home after all.
I’ve just been reminded of him lately - of how I know him to be because of how I know me to be. And no, I don’t imagine him humid in the tit sweat of Florida but rough and bundled in a New England winter (if we ever see one again, and) you know, the brick, the concrete, the steel, in the ways he picked at his skin, each layer thick and dry. Still, he touches soft and kind like a father should. He still twists his mouth to the side to smile, gold teeth to hide. I know he loves me in a way I don’t fully understand - I let that be. I know he is just a man trying to act from belief, just like me. At breakfast w/ no lights on, now, I text him back, a summary of see you in the fall sometime. And I text A, she is planning an escape. I tell myself to go easy and I use my father’s voice to say it, half annoyed but all sweet.
I look around my house for me, as if through his eyes, knowing he’ll never see it. The same warm paint of his first apartment, my books all lined up on every surface like my mother would do, the dirt and clay by the doors - we live here, my love and I, we come home and this is what it looks like. I tell him I’ve got another job and he says he does too. I imagine his hardened laborer’s hands holding roses, lilies, tulips at graduations and doorsteps and offices - getting paid to deliver flowers (life at its most precious, its most beautiful) like he did for me every chance he got, showing up w/out his license and out of context.
He’s too old to still be working but he just moved, has to save some money, wants to see me, wants to see the world. There are parts of the world he had to accept that he’ll never see. Something about that makes me want to run, far and fast, see it all for him and never look back.
My body knows something I don’t. I drank my coffee too fast and I’m getting signals from the Earth, or something electric. The cats are sleeping together after breakfast, Mallory finally feeling like herself again. I have a box to open, E sent me something.
My friends still thinking of me and ice starting to melt. Inside the box is another box cushioned w/ packing peanuts and a rainbow tip pencil. Months and months ago, E told me she was in love and it was effortless. She started drawing again, sent me photos of sketches she had done in rainbow, color impossible to anticipate. This card written the same - Happy everything! it says. My friends and I have traditions that go beyond convention. Inside, my heart swells - red glass and silver. E made me a little ring of silver clay and a dish spun from melted sand, a spiral embossed up top and OK carved by the bottom. I slip silver over gold. I can’t believe the way my friends love me.
It is true that once you start writing, the words all start coming. That once love is given a little light, it bathes all. That once a mirror speaks, it never shuts up. It is true that people are following my examples, and I am following theirs. I cross my fingers that it works out for them, that it works out for me too.
I spend some time w/ William Carlos Williams. I spend some time w/ yesterday’s poem, wrestled out of me half-present and nervous. It is true that my words mean nothing when they arrange themselves before me - it is only later that I learn what they are trying to show me. In the sense that I tame them in black and white, in the sense that it all keeps me up at night. It is true that I have reigned in my dreams to the point of impossible perfection so that they are held at the gates, the gates of blissful possibility w/ no beginning, no unknown middle, no eventual end.
It is true that endings have never sat still in my heart. They wander hopeless, wander wicked, anticipation in the sands while life trickles past, kicking them up in the wind. It is true that I will die loving all that I have loved whether I made room in my life or not. This is how I’m always changing colors but retain my shape, rainbow tipped outline and wild, the paint dried forever at the bottom of the can.
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3/27: Yesterday, I revisited a ghost of myself, young and online and looking. The lost years I spent writing online before I knew what I was doing, no one reading save a few spies, and my heart my heart sitting right up front. My heart digesting. It was uncomfortable, seeing myself so green, so sad, scorned and looking for an out. I am free now, by comparison. I am living differently now - and yet, and yet, my words and body still on a screen. I am making better homes. I am making thoughtful edits. When I write of pain, I do not wallow. When I write of sex, discreet. When I write of love, it is bigger than I could have known back then. W/ all the embarrassing anguish, I found the lipstick I wore in high school, Kate Moss 01, and I said OK, I was something different back then.
I woke up from a dream of running around - a city, a roundabout, a poet’s house, forgetful and shapeshifting. I sit w/ my pages on my knees, knees against kitchen table, happy to be me whatever that means now. I am closer to the sun now, still learning how to forgive myself, the work of my life. In my old writing, I found where I lost my fight. I’m back wearing brown and Whiskey ‘69, feeling my age and keeping water close. In this way, confidence can be relative - how far we come, our rituals, our celebration. I’m leaning against Chaos like a stone, changing the flow.
Oh, I am home from work and trying not to sound too much like myself, the voice of my youth remains the seed of my language, freaking me out. I wonder if all this writing will have the same effect years down the line. If I will reread quickly through my fingers like Venetian blinds, sick w/ feelings long past but never wholly disconnected. I like to think I’m smarter now, that’s what feels the most dangerous about it. We don’t know until we know.
I’m not practicing only to dream but I wonder nonetheless - of future embarrassment, future disappointment, how art speaks for us. I have no hope for fiction, not while life is happening. This kind of thing used to get me in trouble - life according to G. But I’m on fire, here, really trying to learn, to craft, to deepen, to make something out of what life makes out of me. Everlasting.
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3/28: I keep it quiet and dark this morning, just the rain and a little flame for company. My head is stuck in the voices from last night. My head stuck in a cacophony cushioned by memory.
The Workshop Podcast, Pt. IV (Listen here)
The Wizard and M and I, w/ scarves on our heads, endured the rain and split a j w/ the wet. We took our time getting to the Jewel Box. The party would wait, the party would welcome us when we walked in. The humidity flattened me into myself again, hair down and sweat gone cold thrice over. We stacked coats and phones in a familiar corner, adjusting to the pink lights, the crowded room, the mic getting passed around. Hope, she glows a little brighter in here, where magic is made by accident.
My hair stuck to my neck. I put my name down w/ my song. I stuck close to friends all night all night. M had one shaved armpit and one all wild, dead batteries, a whole statement. Achilles in sunglasses and dagger collars of polyester. Red and MC all in black, committing to the bit, black widows singing at the top of their lungs. Eli in crochet and camo, their curls all loose. It was tiny glass of water after tiny glass of water for me, and song after song. The lights flickered for the sad cowboy tune. Always that Natasha Bedingfield song. A celebrity sighting: Rosie, up there singing Japanese Breakfast.
The Wizard namedrops PPS and wails, Home! Is where I want to be, but I guess I'm already there! We share the mic, we share the mic, we share the life, we relish the seconds, the minutes, the magic, it found us, we made it, for just a little while, here, where Portland is pink and full of possibility! This thing I do w/ hope, I let it sing, let it sing!
I slid through from one end of the room to the other, the water cooler in the center the center of the room and crowded around. Like a small fish in familiar reefs, never too far from the windows, never too far from the glass all foggy w/ breath. Our world contained for a few hours tonight.
When I put my name in, the bartender said, hey, it’s you! You here to fuck it up again? I was confused, unexpecting, but my song was up, my tiny glass of water close by and Gaga on the screen. I sag You + I like I had in the car all those times, all the years before but especially the last week or so, my voice admittedly rough from overuse. The last month has been spent reminding myself how much I love to sing, the performer in me, the passenger seat, in the shower all sudsy. I have been forgetting all about my fear of being heard. I sang to my girls in the corner and stayed on my feet and when I was done & a little winded, I got eyes and hands on me, hands on hands, arms around necks. Gaga, always a good choice. For proof, Red and MC got up there and sang John Wayne a little later, while the Wizard packed a spliff and we planned some mischief; Baby, let’s get high. We have dreams to realize together. You work w/ me and I work w/ you, this love thing we do.
The grass waned, the moon winked, MC ordered a small glass of Meletti and let me steal a few smooth sips. She said she felt a kind of deja vu, all day, all day, not like it was all happening again but like it was all unfolding. Nodded my head, me too, me too, all the time lately. We were radiating, tugging on our chains like dogs, losing our cool, kicking the womb.
Hill popped back up after a date and eased in like he always did, like he never left. Red asked, what is the difference between obsession and desire? A serious matter in the purple karaoke bar. We knew the line, felt the line, saw it all turn sour at least once, the line that thickens when something alive becomes fiction, when something energizing becomes theft and responsibility, when things get unsafe.
We sweat some more, and I grew sober for sleep. Last call in sight and I wanted to hit the road. Red wouldn’t let me. One more song. In the corner, I accounted for bag and scarf and Carhartt. I shook hands w/ the owner, busy on a Wednesday night. He remembered me from last month, said they had been talking about me, waiting for a reprise. It’s just that, he tried to be gentle, making short little boxes w/ his hands. I said, No, I’m small, I know, no offense here. He continued, and then you sing and there’s so much power behind it! I was in a state of disbelieving but humbled, humbled, excited even - this piece of me I’ve been hiding away for so long, unleashing in the disco lit queer bar in my wet, wet city. I thanked him, shook his hand when it was empty of empties. He said, this is why we do this. For people to show up, for artists to play, for voices to be heard. Thank you for coming. Like a reprise.
Before long, I threw on my scarf only to stay for one more song, one more song, at Red’s insistence. I was in the arms of my friends, held so tight, and then I was out kicking concrete back to my car in the rain. Gentle now, not so cold. I talked to myself in the dark streets all lit up in puddles and spills, my head still ringing. My head ringing still as I write.
I laughed it up to the sky w/ the reveries I was busy weaving (possibility, possibility), all the hope in my body. To the sky, I said, this could be everything, it could be everything, could lead us anywhere! And I had to laugh a different way, had to keep myself in balance, had to say, or it could be nothing at all, nothing but Now! This thing I do w/ hope. I keep it small enough to carry. I keep it present like in-pocket or around neck, make sure I’m holding it while it’s here, bore it back into the world that seems to be missing so much of it. Everything or nothing, beautiful for now.
I got dreamy on the isolated ride home, even dangerous in my dreaming. I wanted to learn how to hold my Truth like a child, like something I had a responsibility to care for. I wanted to hold on to this inspired joy so it would feel welcome to grow. I wanted to stop telling parts of myself no - danger, danger - and on my dashboard, a flashing exclamation point, water under my wheels. The sweat of fearful awareness and I extended body to machine, took it easy around the corners, until it blinked off for good. I pulled into my quiet suburban drive by 12:12 w/ the first few notes of Now or Never.
3/29: I love to play pretend but I don’t always let myself play in the wild, afraid to be caught by my weak points, like joy and the Unknown. I can’t help but be so real. I hold tight to myself to try and be certain in an uncertain world. The games in my phone are all roleplays. My mask in the world all translucent - my face under my face - and porous. I’ve been breaking out since going off birth control, you can see for yourself. And lately, my body fucking tells me where it hurts - it is specific and damning. It is all red and wet, pomegranates in the Spring.
I bought a pomegranate for the first time today. Intuitively cut it open. Someone says, you have a taste for uncertainty. The ruby arils all I could imagine down my hot throat. I was right. I went to the sink like I saw my best friend's mother do and guessed at what happened in there. I'm at the sink now pulling apart my third pomegranate of the day. I just cleaned and am making a mess.
I go to Room 206 to write, when the rain has stopped but it still looks like rain. Sweat still on skin and shoes off in the mud room w/ everyone’s slippers. Orange peels and pomegranate teeth and something like togetherness when alone. The Witch is here, surprised to see me, says, I think I started menopause today, has a book about it open and upside down, doesn’t want to know actually. We get to ourselves quickly, easily, want to build the future anew but bleeding first, reading first, getting comfortable and showing up first.
I show the Witch The Chronology of Water, my bookmark sixteen pages from the end. She jokes, says, ugh, don’t make me read, I hate to read. She sees my pages out, says, you know there’s an Artists’ Way book club here, right? I do, yeah, I say, I don’t like being told what to do or how to do it. I look up at the bull being bled behind my head, river held by ouroboros and small village. I look at the fallen soldiers and the big titted lion and the couple over there, naked, finding Eden w/ a river run w/ blood. I look at all the Witch’s illustrated tapestries in Room 206. The room filled w/ things found and things created. I’m thinking about how we change the world one choice at a time.
My sister sends me long emails packed w/ writing, the words excitable in the body of the email like nerves under the skin w/ nowhere else to go. Our nerves go out, out, all at once and controlled, just like our mother’s. Our nerves turn themselves into words w/ no one reading. We do it all anyway. We do it all w/ love anyway.
She writes Truth and she means systematically, she means free. I write Truth and I mean something closer to spirit. She capitalizes it for the people, for free thought, as in all will be revealed. I capitalize it as God, as the love thing, as in love will save us all. She writes Now and she means impatience. I write Now and I mean presence. She capitalizes it as a demand, heard and mimicked and entitled. I capitalize it as worship, of the ever-present, inescapable, ever-changing. She reads me and I read her. We do not worry about being misunderstood.
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3/30: Room 206 is in an old cotton warp mill, built for weaving threads. My favorite bathroom in the mill is the men’s bathroom at the top of the center staircase, single stall, second story. It’s the first one I used on that hot hot day in July (below) after the Witch put a payment down. Windows open and we were sweating. The sun was right in there w/ us. Possibility like magic.
At the women’s only club, I use the men’s bathroom, the cooked wind comes through like a sigh from the sun and all my hair is growing out. I am always changing what I could be.
Now, the river rushes and the vines creep from beds of dirt w/ crochet pillows, a true Saturday afternoon. We weave and we speak. We speak like fabric all twisted, like water all rushing towards day, like always in motion & moving through. The tree from the last storm still heavy on its side - we see it, we sit w/ it, we talk about talking. Hair and tulle and cotton, rhythmic braids we pull from our heads. We talk shape and size; we talk integrity and compulsion. V is sitting w/ me. We play same same but different. Her daughter is running around finding the sun and giving everything new names. An artist is moving out of her studio, piece by piece at the end of the month. She presents us a bone, like a small femur, and it is marble painted in green, in purple, like inside copies of Parisian classics sat out in the sun. The Witch found the bone - we use found in quotations, an inside joke. And now it will be kept here for us as if to say, Community, thank you. Community, remember me.
There is a tiny tour today, getting a feel for the place on a Saturday. They see the library all green and the kitchenette all white. They see V and they see me, all the hair and my pages and pages of words. Pages and pages of proof that I have been living w/ maybe too many questions. My body says, still, simplify, bare feet, hardwood, still says go easy like my father, still looks at me w/ only love like my mother. I can’t let love go no matter what. I sit close to those who know.
Now I’m missing my friends and doing a bad job of letting them know that. The water always new, the tree still heavy in the river, my heart still breaking in that way that it has to. My weekends are when my world comes alive. Angels in the night illuminating, weaving, whispering. I cross my toes like a half wish - for something bright up ahead. This is how things move, a little bit of everything all of the time.
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3/31: The small pieces of life make it all feel so big, as big as I knew they could be. Something like God or an accident.
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This entry is a part of my Nightmares & Morning Pages series, where I write every day and share the good stuff. Subscribe to keep up with me & share what you like (please).
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G