I’m moving out of my boarding school dorm room, all these years later– all the other students are gone for summer break, and I’m scrambling to find enough boxes for all the accumulation of so many years– the boxes I had once seem to be long gone. what I’m doing living there still is a question never really answered or even properly addressed, but there’s a strong sense that I’m there long beyond my rightful time, something of an embarassment to the current students– and to myself, of course. so my moving our over break is a courtesy for everyone’s benefit. the ex-best-friend is around, voice on the answering maching or cell voicemail, somewhat at the edge of things, lurking.
geologic formations
dachshund boxes– sometimes we fit snugly into odd spaces, shady alcoves with dishes of holy water to wash by– the places pop random and queer-fitting, tuckable with granite and pointing that squares us in– living sarcophagi we shake off and move out of with each shout of the alarm– out in the world where corners only occasionally invite you to crawl inside– suitcase closet, back booth, the palm of someone’s hand– but then they’re reaching for that glass, or a pile of shoes digs into your kidneys, and you realize it’s time to act like somebody upstanding. it’s a lot of work not to let the crumpling show. for some of us the bed pulls like north the needle. what do you do? keep getting up again, feet on the cold floor– practice gratitude for vertebrae that stack right, for certain mercies of random fortune like food in the fridge, hot water to stand under, transportation– for friends stretched wide like a net to catch you across the country. sometimes it’s hard to feel them so far away, like across town. all too easy to imagine we’re unconnected as we go through our glamorless routine and see the face in the mirror change. maybe inevitable to become strange to ourselves, as we’re always different than we were, what we thought we knew, but never did at the time. in the middle of the night the clock slows down and wakes you with the clamor of its gears– all the things not done: you think through every one, as if thinking were work itself. daily stacks happen– envelopes you can’t bear to open, gifts received, all the residue of that upright march that amounts to something unaccountable. another day you might sort it, find places to put new accumulations, brave the letter opener– in the mean time that day takes time arriving, and the drift across the desk develops sedimentary striations to mark events, anniversaries– left long enough it’ll grow petroglyphs, and maybe some scientific analysis might be performed. they’re doing amazing things with carbon and dna. left long enough, who knows, the scientist might even make some sense of what lived here. to be sure, the inhabitants themselves have little clue. the gods grumble and the ground erupts, just like that. not like our drilling might have anything to do with it. as if we were instrumental in our own doom. nobody in here but us primitive cultures, off the hook by shortsight. I’ve got glasses somewhere but can’t be bothered to wear them, dents on the bridge of the nose presenting a formidable obstacle.
I am awake.
in the middle of the night during all these bouts of insomnia, I think and think through the different possibilities, turning it this way and that– never really arriving at any stunning conclusions– but just to have written one poem can carry me for days. forget audience, forget marketability. here’s a lifeline. forget a book. so many clumps of stuff that don’t quite cohere. so what. just keep trying to push myself to do some kind of work, some kind of play. don’t make it a project. there’s the struggle between the part of me that works intuitively, to the beat of an odd clock, and the other, magisterial part that tries to organize, oversee and plan ahead– feels like they’re positioned so at odds with one another. but keeping going needs to be enough.
the little engine has to believe it can.
nothing seems to have more gravity or anchor than anything else. so I fight consciousness with every stitch and fiber, struggle just to stay sleeping, where the wheel is handed over to someone a lot smarter than conscious me and, to boot, there are no actions with disastrous and disappointing consequences.
I have a sort-of date later this evening, and I approach it with utter dread, sure that toads are going to climb out of my mouth and splat all over the table. I seem to be caught in a downward vortex of not-trying, of avoidance and shame and hiding out, and everything I do seems only engineered to spin it faster, to sink me. I know I need to kick upward, push back against the momentum, but it’s hard hard hard and I can’t quite see why.
am I sinking myself? determined to fail? urging for ruin? it doesn’t feel that way. feels like I’m struggling to get through. but so much disappointment. it’s like falling asleep, like letting oneself freeze to death, succumbing. I try and try and am not sure I know how to get someplace better. it’s been so, so long, and the more progress I make, the longer and harder seems the road. part of me says, well, that’s life, chica. it ain’t easy. but I just keep thinking: broken toy– sprung mechanism.
I know it’s going to keep being hard, pushing back against the pattern of habit, hard to drag myself into thinking in new ways. I need to pick myself up, brush myself off and start trying again– just start– a little bit here, a little bit there. start with the sit-ups and keep going. treat myself like a precious object. if I don’t, no one else will. this is my life. I have opportunity– if I can just pick myself up and try to quiet all the clamoring fears– possibility blooms kind and unjudging before me, spreads wide open– only believe in it, believe in myself– and stop buying into all the mean mental rot. I have a choice– to be perfectly okay. I have the say-so, no one else. it’s up to me.
the way things look vs the way they are
we’re walking along a city street when I notice a man in a uniform bend down on one knee, brace a firearm like a bazooka on his shoulder, and fire into the building ahead of us– we duck and run away across the street and up a hill, up some steps where we encounter more men in uniform in formation, in readiness. we’re trying to make ourselves small and quick to get out of the middle of it, but there’s only just time to duck behind a low wall before it begins– there’s a lot of activity and then something in the air before the building, like a huge bird or bat– and then we see it screech and collapse, fold and fall, when they fire upon it. afterwards the men all put down their weapons and everybody falls out of character, and I realize the whole thing was a street play and that the thing in the air was a giant puppet.
we walk inside into a production in progress and are given elaborate costumes ourselves– we’re dancing girls of a sort, glamorous and erotic, and I’m entirely blue, thickly painted in layers and layers of blue makeup and glitter entirely covering my face and hair. it’s a remarkable experience to become someone else so entirely. we find ourselves in a crowded banquet room standing near one of the tables– an older gentleman speaks cordially to us, and we’re flattered and then realize he’s graciously asking us to move so his party can take their table– and we move out of the way. it’s evident we don’t belong here, aren’t of the same staure as these important people, but our costumes have gained our entrance and somewhat acceptance. eventually we leave, and I’m looking forward to getting in a long shower and washing off all the blue. every time I touch my head or face accidentally, my palms come away smudged with sticky blue glitter.
I’m at huron mountain off-season and run into a friend who’s preparing for his brother’s wedding– I ask if I can borrow his canoe– I’m swimming in the water– and he points down the river to their boathouse in the distance.
hotels & malls
I’m barricading myself in the hotel bathroom– there are people and situations on the other side of the door I just don’t want to deal with. I’m trying desperately to turn the bolt on the door, but it seems to resist sliding home. I’m going around the room pulling the largest towels I can find off the racks– they’re all in dark colors and infuriatingly small– I’m planning to build myself a bed on the shower floor and just live in here if it comes to that.
laura’s waiting for me to meet her to go hear a band play in a ballroom of a hotel attached to a mall, and I’m lost in the mall and can’t figure out how to get there– we keep communicating with one another by cell phone, but I don’t manage to get directions or the right name of the room– I keep going up and downstairs and around and around, growing ever more desperate and distraught. Jen comes along at one point in her red coat and boots, and I try to get her to come with me, but she’s not interested. ultimately there’s a man who joins me– either my father or a lot like him– and he keeps disagreeing with me about which way to go, and it keeps pissing me off when it turns out he’s right.
the house on the square
I’m passing through the central downtown of some southern city in a bus or van– there’s urban decay all around– closed and barely-open shops, ramshackle old houses– and then we’re passing an enormous old one literally on the central square. the structure looks solid– nicely preserved carved old wood like an interior, with balustrades and railings and widow’s walks and tiny side porches, and staggered at different intervals around the ground floor, built-in shapes which are either pianos or roll-top desks. I look at the windows as we’re passing and see stacks and piles of junk, and then just at the last minute as we go by, a person, it looks to be an old man with glasses at one of the windows– and I wave, and he sees me and steps back.
then I get off the bus, deciding on the instant to go up to the house– the next thing I know I’m on the inside, in an entirely different and unimaginable world with the young brother and sister who live there. they’re orphans and have kept apart from the world all their lives, sequestered away in the big old house, the brother only occasionally riding an old bicycle out for provisions.
inside the rooms go on and on– all is space and elegance, with trays of perfectly shaped pincones from the big tree in the yard and pieces of delicate fabric the sister has made from old rags by pouring onto screens like paper. it’s quiet and caverous and beautiful.
the sister takes me around to show me all the rooms on the floor they live on– each lovelier in a stark and old-fashioned way than the next– her bedroom is bright and warm, and I see a sink and say how much I miss having a sink in my room– and then I notice there are several at different points around the room and think it only slightly odd and charming– each one is antique porcelain with a different shape, suggesting a different use.
back out in the main part of the house the sister explains to me something about the chimney chute, how it is full of ashes from all the many years they’ve lived there and therefore dangerous, and so they never burn fires in any of the many fireplaces.
the brother is gracious but more reserved and slightly cold, and just as the sister is taking me to see the last and her favorite room, a little blue door that leads to a tower, he comments that it’s getting rather late– in a clear invitation for me to make my exit– and I’m taken aback and abashed and apologeting, not having realized I’d been putting them out.
they walk me downstairs through echoing ballrooms and libraries, and I turn to the sister and say, let me give you a hug goodbye, stepping toward her, and she shrinks back with a look of extreme distaste across her face– and I freeze– and then apologize and turn away, feeling doubly presumptuous and almost wishing I’d never come. but I love these people and their strange anachronistic world. out on the steps at the last minute I stop and scribble my contact information for them and turn back, pressing it on them, hoping they’ll make use of it sometime, but with little hope– and then I leave.
but nothing is so clean– especially getaways. I go behind the house looking for my car, which I think I’ve left parked there with my dog in the back, but I don’t see it. I’m desperate with embarassment and just want to clear out, so I’m hoping there’s just something wrong with my eyes– I go through the motions of unlocking and opening doors in the spot where I left my car, and if I squint, I can nearly make it out– but I’m accutely aware that it may all be a figment of my imagination and can only pray that the brother or sister doesn’t catch sight of me from one of the windows, pantomiming there with an imaginary vehicle.
I go to visit the house of my little neighbor friend from childhood, these many years later– she’s all grown up, of course, and inside there are four or five blond children, little brothers or sisters, which one of her parents has had with a second spouse. upstairs I learn that her mother has died and it’s her dad’s second family. I’m very tired and fall asleep where I’m lying on the bed listening, and they try to rouse me– I can hear them but can’t seem to wake up– I can feel myself rolling right off the bed and still can’t seem to wake.
weariness & treats for not-my-horse
I’m sitting with my friend, and she looks so, so tired, like I’ve never seen her look before– it’s all written there. I ask about her teaching, when school starts back up and what her load is– she says classes begin on monday– and all I can think is that I’m worried for her if she looks like this at the beginning of the semester.
I ride the horse down from the meadow and around the pond and right up to the house, toss its bridle over a piece of statuary, and tell it I’ll be right back. it’s not my horse, but I get to ride it since I live here. I think about what a sweet deal it is and how much I’ll miss it when it’s over. I go to the kitchen, wanting to find some sort of treat for the horse to thank it for making me so happy, but I’m not entirely sure what it would like to eat– at first I contemplate a tray of chocolate cookies sitting there, but then I think, no, maybe chocolate’s bad for horses like it is for dogs. then I proceed to mix up a bowl of cereals and grains, thinking that must be a safe bet– and at the last minute take a gamble and throw some yogurt in.
what’s my gender
I’m half-dressed, just wearing a long tshirt (which is not quite long enough) when I step outside the dressing closet to quickly grab some clothes out of my bag– just then someone else walks by and sees me– sees my pubic area visible beneath the hem of the shirt– and I realize it’s odly bare and smooth, no hair, and pulled up in such a way that a small knot hangs down– back inside the closet, I look in the mirror and realize I have a tiny penis– then someone else starts to come in, followed by another– the guys’ and the girls’ closets are all together in here, connected– and by now I have my shirt off and am rushing around with a blue bra clutched to my breasts, not on yet, just trying to cover myself and duck away to dress.
the guys are all having some sort of boring guy meeting and the girls are all downstairs doing their own thing. I hang a long, colorful rope swing from a handy hook in the ceiling and put on a chick folksinger I like and proceed to swing all through the upstairs rooms, in and out of the room where the guys are meeting. after awhile I get tired of swinging and hop down– at this point I’m wearing my black and white bathing suit which has served as a kind of leotard– and now I decide I’ll go swimming, knowing the guys will be able to see me if they look– so far there’s been no real response to my shenanigans, but I’m confident that they can see me if they only will.
the wild parts
there’s a large, tall cage just outside the door with enormous tree branches set up as perches. inside are owls and other creatures I’m not as interested in. the cats get in and go after a baby owl– I rush in and pull them off, but they’ve had him on the ground, and I’m worried for him. he seems to have shrunk inside himself, to look no longer even like an owl but rather some other type of smaller bird– his eys are closed, and I’m so afraid for him– I stroke his feathers lightly and speak quietly, begging him, please, to be all right, promising that I’ll look after him from now on. I set him down on the porch and step away, go away for awhile, giving him some quiet space– and when I come back later, he’s better, alert and back to his normal baby-owl size– and when he sees me, he hoos like he’s been waiting for me.
I’m staying in a house beside the northern beach when we find five… what are they? like sasquatch– another race– biped, hairy, peaceful… who have been living in the woods. they have some particular name, a word I’ve never heard before, what they are, the… something or other. and we take them into our house where they’ll be safe– we hide them away from the dangers of the world, other people. but then people start coming to the house, and we’re struggling to keep them safe and hidden– and their fellows are supposed to be on their way– so we keep a lookout, and when, one morning, I see them come walking single file along the water line, I debate for a moment how not to startle them (they’re a shy and wild people)– and then they see me and know it’s me and turn toward me up the beach– but there are the other people in the house– so I move quickly to cut them off– and they startle and turn and run back the way they came. I think, it’s unfortunate that I couldn’t explain it to them, but at least they’ll be safer back in the woods.