What The Eclipse Left Me W/
April 7-13, 2024 / Nightmares and Morning Pages
4/7: Awake like alarm on Do Not Disturb and the rumors of a hangover, like early 20s remember when, like the sun up too high in the sky. My weekend is a late bloomer, showing up for the sun on her time. Sunday, frenetic.
We had to go, to hit the road! Northbound w/ the view! But before, before - how did we get here? I was just at work and now I’m filling out check-in forms between gray flooring and fluorescents. River is meowing all kinds of questions, the carrier under my elbow. I know boy, I’m saying, that tooth is comin’ out.
In his patience, in his pacing, in his panic purring, that big tooth was gone, disappeared. The vet charged us anyway. I was made then, of clay and anticipation, all wobbly w/ possibility. I focused on the sun, the feel of fur, the feel of fear. And jumping on its tightrope was that clown the Now, like steady rhythm. Reverb. Solid bone, strong marrow and not alone. Love, the molten core of the moment.
I looked at River’s tooth when he coughed it up, red and white and raw. I reflected on its slow crawl down and out of his mouth. We watched it like, has it always been this long? Handsome, toothy boy. And now, it’s on the kitchen table, on the bill on the kitchen table, a recommended number to call and an appointment to make. It is still daytime, our friends already up North and waiting for us. Nothing more we can do except follow through. We have a 2 and a half hour ride to the mountains to sleep in the path of totality. The boy is OK today. The eclipse is tomorrow.
                                                                         ✺
4/8: We are mountains on mountains. We are high on someone else’s nostalgia. Last night, the bar was filled w/ music and ski passes, skis on the walls and all wood. We drank beer while we waited and J beat everyone at air hockey. There was seven of us all sat in a circle, ordering dinner, leaning into each other to listen. There was seven of us plus this guy David who was hanging around, nice enough, divorced from the girl from the Labyrinth - yeah that one. Anyway, it was dark dark, late late. We snaked up the mountain under the stars, digging into the ice and all parking together.
Deep dark sky, we got a mouthful. It was as quiet as it was going to be when the edge of Sunday became new day Everything solid, stoic. T, Hill and I walked small loops around the resort before it was colored w/ life, only a few hours from now. I get swept up in the mazes of public spaces - all desire paths possible, carved out for you, a weaving geography, encouraging a natural world. T knows Sugarloaf so well but it was all new to me.
We were all divided between cars, front seats, back seats, and campers. T and I on top of his truck, the windows all zipped up except the one letting the hose of the heater through. T was up early, cooking on the tailgate for all of us in the morning. The sun had never shone so bright. My friends and I waking up a little funny, the cold finding us in sleep. It was breakfast burritos and jinx! and sweatpants all day, open trunks and lawn chairs in the parking lot. T was looking forward to skiing and the rest of us, the rest of us walked down the access road to find the illusion of luxury. We stretched in the sun and played pretend, but we are sincere in our love. It’s easy, even easier here.
I could have spent all day in the locker room. The intimacy of little doors w/ keys and our own jacuzzi down there. And in the room w/ the pool, angled skylights reflected into butterfly wings on the walls and something like 74*. Those too-little towels they give you. The way water dries so slowly. I lay in the sun while skiers descend, and my friends splash around behind me.Â
The six of us in the hot tub under the chairlift and that beautiful, unbelievable breeze. It was warm enough outside to walk around wet w/ comfort. The boys all flapjacked in the snow only to climb back in. We allow awe and ease. We are good at making little games of life. We toss snowballs around until they break off and melt. We get all excited together, the energy thing, our bodies playing w/ temperature, w/ sensation, w/ texture. We were out before our hour was up and it was all walking from there, w/ mud and the fresh mountain air.Â
                                                                         ✺
4/9: There was electricity at the root of all of us, I could feel it when we were on the mountain. There was us and a crowd I’ve seen before in dreams. So many of us unknown and united, spying on the sun and moon. The electricity is intimate and everywhere. The ice that melts in a hot tub. Sleeping bags zipped together. A locker room and lovers hanging on each other in the pool. Lost children being found and sugar packets swallowed like pixie sticks. The moon dropped by yesterday to see the sun, to remind it there was love once, that there is love still, wow, look at that!
Glasses on, glasses off, lawn chairs in the snow and a growing crowd. I kept my eye on the sky opposite. I wanted to see what happened to the world when there was eye contact in the sky, how it buzzes, how it goes blue. Up there in the mountains, we were only eyes, only eyes looking up, the way we worship w/ our attention - heads and cameras and colanders.
J said indigenous communities believe you should give the sky some privacy during an eclipse, and that felt true. The day felt special, full of fire, like peeking through a crack in the door - crack in the sky and passion leaking out. The world darkened like thumb over the lens. Shadows were hole punched into the Earth. We ran around in small circles, digging our own little holes to each other. We reached out, held on, animals huddling together under a strange sky. Quick like lightening, like what’s gotten into me!? The way the darkness melted around us, breathing in and breathing out like that, the way darkness that isn’t meant to last. Shadows shifting from left to right, spiraling around for a few sweet moments and out again.
My friends and I just looking all around, looking at you looking at me, like there are tears balancing in your eyes, did you know that? Are you wet w/ disbelief? We experience this together and we love each other more because of it.
When the sun rose for the second time in the Northeastern sky, she was stronger, warmer. The sun owns the day, turns snow to slush to rivers. The crowd behind us, the crowd around us, grew sharper and stranger. It was going to be a long way home. At the end, it was T, Hill and I walking all around again. We saw Sugarloaf go from solid to liquid and now it was gas. Everyone expelled, moving constantly and bouncing into each other to get the hell on the road. Like vines, lines of traffic threading from overstuffed parking lots. All metal and engines running, the traffic became a new landscape on the Earth.
We waited until dark to nose our way in and tap on the breaks. Only one way down the mountain and 10,000 of us. We snaked again, slowly in the dark, all red all white while the altitude changed. We met midnight bleary-eyed on even ground again. This was surrender, some kind of final push.
                                                                         ✺
4/10: Back in the cold and wet where I dream instead of sleep and swallow instead of speak. Too much fear to be fully lost in love. Too much hope to be totally surrounded by dirt. Haven’t had much to say to myself except worry, haven’t had much to my name except cents on the dollar, haven’t had much sense except fantasy and I’m falling w/ my eyes open.Â
I’ve had fantasies, fantasies, all the wishes that life could be.Â
In the mornings, I fish for sleep instead of poetry, where it’s still warm and shaped like love. I bleed. I laugh. I lose. What else to do? River’s tooth, all bloody at the root and my future a little rotten too. On stage, in stories, we were fed fantasy. I worked behind the bar and watched the girls work the mic - SALT telling stories at Space. The theme of fantasies, egos dressed as something new, love in ears that know how to listen.
Perhaps I’ll be a child forever, hearing what I want to hear. And somewhere in my throat is Desire that ages like milk. I am raw, uncooked, clearing my throat to keep them down, digest and send out to a life w/ room for them - time, money, land for them. I can’ keep up w/ the Here & Now. The way even the sweetest blessings have some Death in them.Â
River is on my lap all warm and I am between jobs in the rain. I am broke, in the red. I believe I am 29. I cry whenever I hear the phrase, good for nothing and what did you think would happen? whether it’s directed at me or not. River knows none of this or he knows all of it. Either way, he purrs w/ his head rested sweet, gray boy on my now-gray jeans, w/ a tooth missing, the big one, and a hole where it was, a physical lump in his throat and a metaphysical one in mine.Â
If I were to let myself pray today, it would be for his health and longevity, my boy who is all love, it would be for help financially and a place where I belong - beyond the cold, beyond the wet, beyond the fantasy.
                                                                         ✺
4/11: My boy and I are resting. Morning new, morning old, the first morning all week w/ any time at all. Thursday, my boy and I resting. Small, furry, aching fury, my cat and I made of blood and healing funny. Speaking in moans, speaking in groans.Â
The sun was here for a second but it’s raining again. April again. Newborn things poking out of trees and time I haven’t accounted for properly; it hangs in the flat gray sky above us w/ my life, my job, what I’m supposed to be making here. I can’t part w/ the blanket this morning. Future out of reach from womb of skin and fleece. River sends me a slow blink. It means sleepy, means safe, means love. He rests his little head on my belly where it aches. I try to be calm for him, movements slow, breathing deep and long like meditation, like easy, like should be the easiest thing in the world, staying alive one determined breath at a time, blinking slow, blinking long, blinking like love you forever.
                                                                         ✺
4/12: Freebleeding at the supermarket, black shroud, leather trench. Burying the mouse below the tree. Cats bring Death, Death brings rain. I form a circle out of pinecones. I have no words for prayer. Who said prayer needed language anyway?
My inking world, made thin w/ the spit of God. The sirens wail and wail when there is still some hope left. Drenched, I am uncomplicated. I have confessions to make. I have this spot on my lip I keep chewing on (as if wounds needed proof and) there is rot all over.
I trust the body to expel the rot, the blood to cloak bone and mercy to flood the world. They are starving, starving. The infection throbbing. Thieves wearing crowns and heroes dying w/out a sound.Â
I watched my cat’s tooth move slowly out of his mouth till one day it was just loose and swallowed. My boy, mute in his pain. The tooth now, on my kitchen table - blood on gnawed bone. More work to do. More pain to wait for. I wash it and roll it in my palm, sharp on both ends. He still hunts w/out it. This morning, I believe life outlasts death after all.
                                                                         ✺
4/13: The sun shines on Room 206 today and I’m stretching out, a little freer than yesterday. It’s Saturday. I move soft green chair to write by the window. Skin soft, I feel agreements and disagreements in my body and today I feel strong enough to hold them. Maybe I finally feel rested and allowed. Maybe because yesterday had a bit of everything. In the morning, it rained, I cleaned. I went home to hard phone calls and a snack. I read to myself in the shower, my own words carrying me like steady river rolling on.Â
Yesterday, we played luxury again for C’s birthday. Him and his girl, T and me, we feasted. We went to a place where everything is generous when you pay for it, where generosity is why you pay for it – something so worth celebrating. We shine a little sun on someone we love for the simple act of continuing on. We smiled big in the low light. We melted into the food, everything so good, and my generous fairy friend working that night, serving us, being so generous. Thanks to her, we actually felt welcome in this place, a bright star in our orbit. We were full, we were gas giants, we were friends, well, more like family and we’ve been like this since the beginning and for so long. Years of our lives like this.
So I got two cosmos w/ orange peels and gave C the tooth in a little velvet bag. He hugged me tight like, brother! I couldn’t tell at first, but he was crying. We toasted to River’s health over ice cream and aperitifs. Happy birthday swirled in chocolate syrup and T and I splitting a small, stemmed glass of Meletti.
We got caught in the wind in my watercolor city, clingy in blue, layers and layers of it. T & I went to second location but not third. We wound down together and woke up close in the sun. We are working on getting each other through in our own weird ways. We are feeling the wonders of love, here where it gets difficult.Â
We touched so easy this morning, something like softness until I was too excited, how I get sometimes. I have felt the iron of me today, the silver, the blood, the resilience of self. I smirk at the night, feeling equal to her, ready to play.
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).
My messages & chat are open for inspired journal prompts or anyone who wants to pick apart the world with me. Catch you on the next go around 𖦹
G