Heavy, heavy October, that's the truth of it
October 2023/ Nightmares & Morning Pages
10/1: I want to trust that this body knows beginnings intuitively, that the sigh that escapes my lips was released when it had to be, a kind of harmony between breath and clay, air bursting from its folds, a heart beating blindly, blind to past, blind to future. What happens when we become in ways we don’t yet recognize? When the body holds the controls instead of the anxious mind? Or doesn’t hold any controls at all & just feels, morphs? Feels, morphs, protects & ages & feels & morphs.While hand-pressing cider yesterday, we found a large, fuzzy caterpillar - a Giant Wooly Bear hoping to become a Giant Leopard Moth. We found it in disguise, a ring on a leaf, cautious in its youth. Its whole existence, a poetic symbol of growth & transformation to the human animal - all insects misunderstood as mysterious in their size & silence compared to us. All transformation misunderstood as evil at first, in its courage and resilience.
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10/2: Thinking about names, a name as protective layer, a label, a link, a name as vibration, the hum of life, a prayer to each other when we say a name w/ love. How your name has been spoken for decades, centuries, will be spoken for centuries, centuries, will be carried even longer. This alone is beautiful but there is more. There is you, the living vibration that named your soul (nothing solid in eternity) - a name, an inside joke w/ ourselves, our past beyond past giggling w/ the future.
Which came first, emotions or delusions? Which protects us? Sometimes both, sometimes neither. I suppose my body knows the answer to that one. I suppose I should become a better listener. I’ve found my ‘why’ and now I’m finding my ‘how’ and ‘when.’ I ask the sun for support. She first taught me the importance of layering, of having things to put on & take off. Now, in sweatpants & silver, I see the tan lines under each ring, a ring on each finger. These totems & talismans, they do what I need them to do, like chalk on bottom of bare feet & evil eye on old string. They keep my sentimental underbelly safe & cast in silver. They keep my family close & my name on my lips. Their shapes, secure circles, the endlessness of things. They keep my once silent, secret fingers singing, so now I can hear the magic they’re making w/ touch.
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10/3: All my sacred spaces have legs, up & off, w/ or w/out me. They don’t ask of me much. I’m allowed my generosity as well as my thoughtlessness. I am learning that sacred means strong, not precious, means enduring & resilient, not fleeting. I am making my insides sacred & my outsides sacred, w/ and through their enduring mutability - I look to sacred friends and sacred teachers for reference. Once shy in the presence of the sacred, once defiant in the presence of the sacred, I will be kind & sturdy & humble & inquisitive. I am not everlasting as the sacred has the potentiality to be but I am what I have.
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10/4: I hear “love like money” at a poetry reading, my words echoed back at me - because they’re not just my words, there is truth entwined in them. & what do we know? Do poets know anything worth knowing? As we sit together & weave community w/ our egos like fingernails? Mine tearing & getting all caught up in the fabric. I sit close & talk to the stage, like gap between lace, folding & tearing in the same stretch. I haven’t been making enough. I haven’t been loving enough. What I know to be true, well, that’s only for now - like love, like money, like the energy it takes to meet new people and to hold them. Quick, remember them now! Before they become Internet & unwoven from the felt seams of this October night! Before they take your dreams & their dreams w/ them, ripped from the room in an unceremonious tear in the lace! I’m a little frantic this morning, still downloading last night in my body - woke to my notes app once or twice in the night, jumped awake to wash the sweat ripe from my pits at the start of the day.
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10/5: I am thinking of art, now, as a holding cell for fantasy, or a zoo or a stage, for all lives unlived or half-lived, the breath held in the lungs and released as something new, another’s voice or costume, or crafted into a beautiful disguise - here, another reason art is sacred. Yes, the birth. Yes, the process. Yes, the object. But also, the life undead, the precious, willful life that transmutes, force birth a different way, let it meet the world as something more perfect than human, that changes the world & welcomes change from the world, on & on w/out us, w/ whispers alive as the day we swallowed them, giving life to more & more like it.
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10/8: Just when I start to feel alive, I find I am rotting w/ the best of them, w/ each creeping beast of time. Vampire on my ceiling, lightning out my window and whoa, whoa, ok, ok - ok nose bleed ok brain freeze ok unease ok un-me. Look how sickness remakes me: just a body again in the morning, just an ache again after 3 days. 3 days & I am driving again, feeling better, hearing better, breathing better, just in time for day job.
I watch my desires become mundane & human again, watch the whole of me do the same. What does harmony give me? The same that water gives me, the same that eternity gives me. Where is the wind blowing me? The same way I was already going. The same day to day to day, time to fill & I am filling it. (Do I sound ungrateful to you? Let me write myself back around). I rest in exploration. I rest in adventure. I sleep in the unknown, sweating, sweating, fever, fever & awake w/ trickster familiarity (all that is made w/out noticing).
The house is warmed by the sun, by the oven set to 450*, by cast iron pan & French press. House is warmed by the life that keeps being lived, by the friction of continuity, of on & on, rubbing sticks together to make fire, that kind of consistency, like breathing, like beating, like playing card stuck in bicycle wheel, that sound of life w/ or w/out me. The colors chasing death outside my window & I, walking alongside in true.
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10/9: My mornings left askew in sickness, this practice put on hold - can I just be a body for a few days? A body needing water and rest? It is October 9th & gold touches everything I see. For a while, it seems every October I was in love, in one way or another. And no matter what that love has turned into when the month became ghost and hungover, in October I got to be in love.
In death, we hear more life - leaves chaotic as atoms, chaos makes things real. I remember the romance of science class, learning nothing can truly ever touch completely, a little bit of space in everything seemingly solid. Forbidden love, it always makes me think, & how true it is in every sense. Everything we think is whole is full of holes, is holy because of this. & we can always get closer to something, can lean our full weight on, can climb on top of & purr, but there will still be space in between - pockets of air, caves for bats, depths we cannot reach and maybe have no right to. In the same way I know that love is more than a feeling, so much more than we have the capacity to fully understand, in the way it will save us, in the way we are wet in water.
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10/10: Looks like rain, babe, looks like a change from dress to sweats, fast to slow, noodles instead of movie theater popcorn. Something is stirring in my belly but I don’t know what it could be sore for. I blow my nose & out comes slime, clear slime all mine. I don’t know, there’s a creeping feeling today, something in the shadows I can’t communicate w/, not clearly, not well, not yet. The greens of the world have deepened, even the vibrant swirling fiddleheads gone muted & muddy. 10/10 like two blinking eyes on the calendar.
I ask the internet: What are you forgiving yourself for today? I forgive you, I forgive you, I forgive you all - so much easier than I forgive all of me. Who is the human here? What does it take to forgive? What makes forgiveness freedom & not a free pass? / There is truth in what I write & truth in what I say, I just don’t think they are always the same truth - I ask all this as if I will get a definitive, as if, once the self is all sorted, I will know authentic thought authentic action, and I will not waste time worrying or failing, as if I can simply move from realigning & asking, all the time asking. But the truth is, the truth truth, is that I can stop any time I like. I can stop making efforts to change. I can stop changing. I can die this way, die as I’ve seen others die - stubborn, dissatisfied, at odds w/ the world they can’t control, suffering there. That, I fear. That, I do not want. On another side of that coin is a different kind of surrender.
I fear I don’t yet know faith as well as I try to but I am trying to. I fear as if I’ll fall, I fear as if I am unworthy of what I have, I fear if I don’t know how I got it, I won’t (don’t/haven’t yet learned or doesn’t want to learn or am imperfect in my learning) know how to keep it. And if I keep it too long, if I lean too far into it, indulge too deeply, I will ruin it. I fear I am ruining it. Quickly, I hear “You will ruin it” and it sounds like a gentle assurance instead of a threat. Things get ruined, glasses get spilled and smashed. W/out that, nothing moves. Life gets lived in a lesser way. You are trying to get free of the natural movement of life. Foolish. Life has a rhythm, it’s supposed to carry you, world to world, dream to dream. If you don’t trust your own desire, what do you trust? You fear it all instead? Your body, you gut, your logic, your words - this practice is helping you build that trust. As always, you have more than you think - all of which you ache for w/ lack, you have more than you think.
10/11: The morning, the slow unwind - the 10,11,12 - the a,b,c,d,e,f,g of it all. Good morning, I am falling in line after the f and before the h, after 7:30 when the house is quiet, before 9:15 when I turn my car off in its parking spot & disappear into the workplace. My head focusing on the now of it all while my body dares to dream of softer things: coffee that never cools & striped cotton sheets. But I am awake now & it is Wednesday. No going back. When drawing a spiral, you must begin in the center & draw around, you get to where you’re going by knowing where you’ve been.
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10/13: Look at life, knowing exactly when to drop in, opportunities held close to the chest of the ether, tests not pass or fail but in the light of desire & limits. Oh there is a buzzing, here. Yes, from the fridge. Yes, at the base of my spine. Yes, in the air, in the death, in the life, in the life! First thing I do when I wake up is dream & piss, dream & piss & stretch.
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10/14: White, white Rhode Island, w/ its haunted Colonial homes & overpriced boutiques, Tennis Museum, Tudor architecture. We are in a sweet crooked apartment off of Bellevue, 10 minute walk from wherever we would need to go. I am weak from the night before - a jam band in a bar dressed for Halloween, dueling wedding parties, too many Dante’s Infernos (something w/ spice & tequila), hell in a kitchen pot bedside. This morning, we were up w/ the sun again - pastries & striped towels on Gooseberry Beach. I was thankful to be the one with the camera, feeling inspired with a job, seeing all around me. I thought of my mom, am thinking about her still. In all the rush & expense of weddings, traditions & expectations, my most favorite things are when the couples do something unique & special to them as people - this early morning cold plunge being a good example. I wish I had more energy for the day, but I will imagine this body a balloon, inflated by joy, what we will never truly run out of.
10/15: Quick change car ride, brunch at 10 & check out at 11 - we’ve only got ourselves to show for our lives, can’t take nothin’ w/ us. All the ways we are free & still need to be freed, the ways we free each other & have to keep freeing each other. We leave the church and hope the ritual works (long lives full of love, dear God!) We cheer for the ones in love to kiss & kiss. The tide went out at nightfall, we shake and talk of love across the aisle, going all out on the dancefloor. Our parents and grandparents learning & dancing along, all singing “You keep us young! You keep us young!” We sing back “Teach us love, teach us longevity! Love, love & longevity!”
When I can breathe by the outside, outside the condensation-lined tent in the rain, I see love - I hear, “Love is so powerful.” Thinking family, thinking friends, thinking freedom for the world. I hear, “and it’s everywhere, dude. It’s everywhere. It creates for us fearlessness.” I watch young girls on the dance floor for the first time, everyone in an encouraging circle of energy. I watch older generations learn the words to our ridiculous songs, learn the moves that go along w/ them, watch them watch us knowing how long we have watched them. Loved hands in the air, in our hair, on our bodies in motion. This is our best evolution, one of dance & attention, joy & touch & connection. Our rituals that work: The dancefloor of a wedding. It’s most important we don’t lose this. It’s all we have to do here - love, love, love.
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10/17: Oh no, I did it again, fell away from me - now it’s Tuesday and I’m too tired to think. Oh no, I’m hunched over my life like I am hunched over this writing book, bent at the waist and trying. The world is dying & prayers are too quiet. The clock is telling me I have to go but I am not ready yet. All the world hungry on their own time. This is Tuesday in my kitchen: no bombs, no rapists, no terror, no vengeance - does justice belong to those who need it most? Feeling helpless. Helpless to time, helpless to love, helpless to friends I can’t reach & lovers who overlook, helpless to the smell of rot in the air, helpless to the here & now, helpless to the cats’ yowls, helpless to the world as it burns & all the lives taken out of it. Ugh Ok. I write this not out of desperation but of awareness, placement, all that I can hold onto this morning - cold, weak hands who have had to dig for nothing.
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10/18: Last night, my friend Anna came to stay. Last night, Mallory got out. I woke up before 4AM & knew for sure. I searched every closed door & soft hiding spot, felt around in the dark. I witnessed panic in my body - hot tears, short breaths, but I had things I could do. A few minutes imagining vast neighborhood, vast world. T got pants & shoes & sweatshirt on. I got pants & shoes & sweatshirt on. Outside, dark night, wet wet leaves all over & impossible corners. I put food in a silver bowl for her on the porch & cried out “please please please.” She didn’t feel gone, not yet, an impossible thing to imagine. And even here, I was asking “what is this teaching me? Please come home please please.” No sooner had I tossed pillow & blanket on the couch by the door, I looked to the window and there was Mallory, sniffing food bowl of silver. There was the door - I flung it open and she hurried through. There was my girl coming home. I am so grateful, have been in a sleepy cloud all day grateful, living my life every day grateful. With my too many questions, too many doubts, I lay them down tentatively. Love allows curiosity instead of desperation. Love allows clarity. Emotions are a moving force & loss, inevitable.
10/23: My friends were here & now I am just here, catching up as best I can on sleep, on sleep & care. My dreams are full of old feelings & my fridge full of soup & cider. I am both lost & found in my friends.
When happens when I do not write? I slam doors & have nothing to say. A slow drip of empathy, I all but leak tolerance until it is another mess I have to clean up off of the floor. I do not dwell in the damp rags used to clean it all up, I do not dwell & rot there. I do not rest in the unforgiveness of my nature. These are habits I have been growling at & growing out of. Rather, I apologize & take another step. This is a self portrait in transition. I am a moving picture, hard to hold, hard to make sense of. The way you & I breathe turn us into vibrating things, always in motion. All of us asking the world to hold us - punishing the world when it doesn’t and being punished when we defy our own nature.
At my kitchen table looking at the sun, punishment seems far away - righteousness, vengeance, genocide, all seem far away. But there are vibrations from it still, felt as an undercurrent to our privileged form of safety. The world will change quickly, ground up & total. I feel called to write for lives that aren’t mine or like mine, for love the Earth has swallowed again, for the weeping side of vengeance & oh, oh, how we are afraid even all the way in the righteous West. Not enough poems about how we are afraid. I write from the smoke side of the fire, where mine own hands clean in a filthy, hungry country (to ash we shall return and) this ash covers all, composes all - stories made of something more than ash, something like control. All this writing of control & punishment, fear & truth & pain - I look up at the sun through the window in the door and see someone drew a heart on the glass.
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10/25: Loving & lost, more everyday.
10/26: Good morning, dangerous, broken world, we are watching all the horrors of you. I am writing w/ half-words and incomplete sentiments, all carrying weight I don’t know how to hold properly. We are repeating ourselves as a nation, we have been repeating ourselves for so long. I am thinking of everyone staying in their homes today. I am thinking of quiet, anxious highways. I am thinking of those who cannot hide, would could not hide. I am thinking of those who cannot cope. I am thinking of guns & drugs & pain & hate. I am thinking of all the words that aren’t enough to say, the one phrase we’ve been repeating today: “The fucking guns.”
If death was left alone as a natural thing, the pain would still be so great - why must people take to the streets and dress up as death? We are dying at the hands of creatures just like us! And for what? I pray this hate dies before we do. I pray love eats it all. This is the only change that matters.
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10/27: The only thing to do w/ emptiness: shake it out or shake around inside like rattle of bones, get the song going. I am letting the pain of the world get to me today. I am asking questions with painful answers. I ask just to get them out. There is this fearful, fearful frustration inside of me like a river, flooding and widening itself, softening the bank of earth until it slips in itself, swallowed rocks and growing.
The apples puddle around the roots like a river run red. The river of this world run w/ what we’re made of, what drips from us so easily. Yes, it is October and too many of us are gasping for breath. Yes, it is the dawn of something new after this aching lifelong fright night. & everything, tipped in red, like mourning brush bristles after breakfast, like tears of the mother, tears of the vampire, something red we know well. In our flag & through our hearts running, no longer painted about doors, for this plague has mutated.
There is a hole in the center, in the center here, where my hands go to hold myself in and I, I understand how hate grows. You can feel it taking from you, that’s what it does. You feel it like a raw thing, pink & weak & you know who put it there, don’t you? Only you know that, you keep it, you don’t have to tell me, no, just put your hands here in the center, in the center of me & see how I change in pain. My face all like this: see the twist of it, how I crumple into paper. Your face can twist like this too, has twisted like this - your muscles are my muscles are god’s muscles - tell me now, how do you still hate?
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10/30: I think I know what to tell the children. I am so afraid to say it - an ache in my liver, an ache in my heart. How many times can I point to an open door? Our eyes adjusting too quickly to the light or else, or else there is something so radiant behind it, surreal to the dirt of us, the pomegranate in the dream painting, the sun in the sky. Our feet are doing the stomping, stomping together, I am stomping w/ you, pounding down the earth & shaping it. Our heels dig & we pivot, our bodies taken w/ it, first rigid then so relaxed, taken by the world and all all all that we don’t know. So much so - abrupt pirouette & change - we don’t rest in the warmth of truth, the fire of love, that radiant thing we need to move through this. This easiest thing, alive in each stretch towards one another.
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10/29: Last night I dressed up as a heretic / Tuesday I will be a clown / Both are true.
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10/31: I am dressed up like a clown, ruffles on neck & ankles, lace gloves & a frown. I feel no sturdiness in today, only coffee before work & practice before poetry. Spirals on my cheeks - this at least will feel easy. This time last year, I was wearing velvet & leather in Paris, raining raining w/ my best friend. We got matching tattoos & followed the Eiffel Tower into the night. A year feels immeasurable. I feel sick w/ time but also sick from fighting it. I have become a thing impaled by time like all the rest, once again looking for some kind of very specific freedom.
