i guess i

these are some fragments of a little moleskin that started one of the most important friendships in my life.  before we even knew much about each other, we started passing this notebook back and forth throughout the school day like little school girls passing notes (m's idea).  this notebook and the subsequent friendship has become more important to my experience and sense of self than i can even express.

this was back at the beginning of so much change and ache and joy and shift.
in so many ways, everything has changed.
 in so many ways, everything is the same.

define happy

what's so great about the giving tree?
i wish that trees had legs
so it could run away
if it wanted to.

rage/still

outside myself
watching from somewhere
until a trigger
sends the register of some hurt
flashing across my face
flashed
seen
and impossible to reclaim

somewhere, a door closes.

some light lifts
and sends shadows on words
where there were none

wait

rage rage rage

like dancing
alone
with a watcher
unmoving

rage rage rage

space

"Into that empty space of not knowing- a space sometimes colored with righteous resentment at what could have been cowardice, stupidity, or bad luck- that empty space of no definitive news was filled now with a brand-new sorrow, and who could tell how many more on the way."

-Toni Morrison Beloved

a silence and a sob

wrestle to fill the space 

where a promise used to be.

instead

i woke myself laughing at the puppet head.  the mistake was just hilarious.

(you see, in the dream there was some sort of documentary program on the screen.  the voice was talking about a woman's life and how she'd changed over the years (i do not remember for better or worse) and i was extremely interested.  but what really got me was when, instead of showing pictures and footage of the woman, the cameraman made the mistake of letting the camera land and remain on the head of a puppet.  a hollow head of a puppet, smiling and unmoving.  and in the dream the cameraman's error was so funny to me!  it was the story of a woman and how she'd changed but the shot was stuck on some image of a puppet, unmoving!  how come no one noticed the cameraman's error!  how absurd!) 

i woke myself up laughing, and apologizing for laughing but it was just too, too funny.  i've told the story two times now, since waking up, and i'm staring to wonder if it's even funny.  i'm starting to suspect that the focus on the stilled puppet was hardly an accident at all.

the puppet, stilled and smiling
an utter lack of agency
instead of the woman who had changed

they say, in dreams,
you are every person
you play every part

if you can't carry it, bury it
come back later with stronger arms
you are too heavy
to keep, heart

every box is like a tiny funeral for my dreams
some unconsidered option
some box too heavy
some arms too weak

i do not know which one i would open
but i would like the strength to try

i do not know what i want
except the option to consider
what i want

some active voice
some cause for celebration
instead of little deaths
every day

something about stickin

this generation don't know nuthin about stickin to something
don't know nuthin about a promise.
nuthin about stickin with a job for a whole of your career
about loy- al- tee
about marryin and stickin to it
always jumpin from one boat to another
all of em leakin
go to the doctor and get pills so you can live on borrowed time
don't know nuthin about plantin gardens and watchin em grow

the only attempt you manage to muster
is a halfass promise to the credit card company
and even then,
it's a gamble and a prayer that that promise means squat

but you HUNGRY for it
god, you starvin
you don't know nothin BOUT a promise, but you love hearin about and believin about it
somebody on tv promise you life gonna look different if you buy something new
and you sell your soul to chase that promise
you feel some kind of itch to try on every promise to see if it fits
you jump through apartments and lovers and religious and political a- feel- ee- Ations
but you lookin for the same thing every time

you lookin for a word that means somethin

and someone tol you if you ain't find it yet, you ain't lookin hard enough

but i'm here to tell you, if it ain't there, it ain't there
and no amount of scrunchin up your face and starin is gonna put it there
there ain't gonna be no promise resurrected from some hollow tomb

you want somethin and you ain't find it yet-
you start makin it for yourself

you start makin a promise of your own
something you know about
and know how to keep

and you start learnin how to stick to it

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Finished a second reading on September 11.  Not as many tears, but a deeper connection to Oskar due to a greater understanding of PTSD.  On my first reading, the Something/Nothing dichotomy stood out  much more clearly.  Perhaps it spoke to the moment.

The only tears shed this time  were caused by the build that resulted in the last line:

"We would have been safe."

and the frozen image of the falling body,

 reversed to ascension, 

but still and inevitably a remnant of something that cannot be reversed. 

 a stilled reminder that there is no safety. 

 there is no way to take that body out of the air.

that spoke extremely loudly to me this time,

it is incredibly close to my biggest fears

of helplessness.

happened upon

i happened upon a song she was singing

i had in depth knowledge of her metaphor                                              (of course she was singing,

and how her heart strings were not the expression of some universal,            they're always singing

but of one pull in particular                                                           or doing incredibly alluring things

  and i know the puller                                                                                         that draw you in the codes that lock up the metaphor                                                                                     and keep you 

 i know the one                                                                            on the side of an everyone audience

the arrows point to                                                                                                  simultaneously.                                                                                                                   in unforgiving ways                                                                     nose up against the fourth wall glass

                                                                                                      but that's as close as you will get.

once you know the code,
the chords are easy to learn.

i knew the codes
but                                                                                              you had her glowing like a highlight reel
the glow was gone and it                                              (but the rest of us are real time real time real time)
left a lacking but not a longing                                                 and i squinted my eyes at a thing so bright
and she didn't glow and  
the room went hollow for me.                                                      sometimes i find myself squinting, still.

looking for a cue.

on this day

everyone is intent on the need to say

REMEMBER 9/11

today.

What, exactly,

and to what end?

No amount of remembering will prevent 

something like it from happening again.

Everyone gone remains gone.

And those still alive remain changed

and don't need a reminder to remember.

In fact,

sometimes wouldn't forgetting

be a welcome relief

to those that don't need a reminder to remember?

sometimes isn't letting yourself forget

a necessary thing

to do?

scared

"Passing"

I read the novella "Passing" for my American Ethnic Literature class.  It is so rich.  On one level, it is a discourse on a mulatto woman who has spent her adult life "passing" as white attempting to return to her African American roots.  But SO MANY other voices join the discourse, including a chilling exploration of gender roles.  The interior backflips of the narrator often rang all too true, highlighting the complexity of navigating female identity in a world that would pin women against men, and so often against other women as well.  Next to one seemingly insignificant part of her narration, I wrote, "HOW DO ANY OF US LIVE AT ALL?"  Because, while the passage now reads as quite trivial, the momentum of the novella culminated in the acute and overwhelming awareness of how HEAVY and inescapable the navigation of social relationships can be.

I will reread this.  I may even write a paper on it.

"Yes, life went on precisely as before.  It was only she that had changed.  Knowing, stumbling on this thing, had changed her.  It was as if in a house long dim, a match had been struck, showing ghastly shapes where had been only blurred shadows.  ...

So like many other tea-parties she had had.  So unlike any of those others.  But she mustn't think yet.  Time enough for that after.  All the time in the world.  She had a second's flashing knowledge of what those words might portend.  Time with Brian.  Time without him.  It was gone, leaving in its place an almost uncontrollable impulse to laugh, to scream, to hurl things about.  She wanted, suddenly, to shock people, to hurt them, to make them notice her, to be aware of her suffering.  ...

It hurt.  Dear God!  How the thing hurt!  ... In that second she saw that she could bear anything, but only if no one knew that she had anything to bear.  It hurt.  It frightened her, but she could bear it. ...

It hurt.  It hurt like hell.  But it didn't matter, if no one knew.  If everything could go on as before.  If the boys were safe.  
It did hurt. 
But it didn't matter."

But it does matter.  It does matter.
Nella Larsen gave a voice to so many things that do matter, and that people, often women, spend a whole lifetime trying not to look at.

reservoir

there is not time enough
i am german and most certainly will not age well
the freedom of being known
the absolute instability of every single thing
except quantum physics
and other things i know very little about
but interact with on some level every single millisecond of every single day
(like people)
which will never be repeated
today is the only today that will ever be
and sometimes people have a knack for remembering dates and exact times
and sometimes knacks work like knocks that haunt and tease long after there's anyone left at all on the other end of the heart
attract attack
sometimes we forget entire years.  someday today will not even
"What the?"
what ever happened with the hurricane? ivan?
how many people died in 9/11?
but how many people survived?  how many people are still alive?

move one grain in the sahara once and you've changed the course of human history
but who cares?

pretty pretty pretty is a problem for everyone everyone everyone
pretty much
muck
a boat load of confidence and no means
an ocean of heavy water
but still afloat

"In bed that night I invented a special drain that would be underneath every pillow in New York, and would connect to the reservoir.  Whenever people cried themselves to sleep, the tears would all go to the same place, and in the morning the weatherman could report if the water level of the Reservoir of Tears had gone up or down, and you could know if New York was in heavy boots."
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close