what is left, what settles, when everything is still?
these days, there's an insistent taste in my mouth, a memory: someone calling for dinner, someone calling for another. not much seems more resonant than the sound of someone calling another in, arms curling, come on over, sky darken, house warming. a house full of messy beds, closet full of sheets, pantry full of food,
words stick in my mouth like a fishbone in reverse. something I can barely let go, let alone fashion into words. even this writing is tedious, lumpy, slow to arrive. I can tell. could I edit what I write here? yes, but I push it through. these words right now aren't meant to be shared. a dog desperately digging a ditch. talking late until our voices are hoarse. trying to get at the thing we're always circling, trying to seek the thing amidst this all.
do you get it? do you see it, self? do you know what I'm talking about? could you name it for me? (am I trying to pin it down?) these rough hewn words are barely working, but I hope, I hope, if I keep on typing, it will emerge amongst this mass, spooling out an anchor, casting a net, letting it run, run, run, words finding its course.
is it here? it's always here. it's never here. sometimes it's here. sometimes the noise of music and conversation can drown it out; other times it can heighten it, the thing between us, always present. the texture of this thing is invisible and viscous, ladled in scoops and distributed, collected, skimmed, thinned, spread, buttered, frozen and chopped, diluted and drunken. hot glue, leaving the nozzle, sticky, burning, perfect.
what to do with it?
--
finding, finding. what am I finding. the clear obvious ones are: grief, sadness, disgust, anger, judgment, disappointment, confusion; surprise, resignation, perspective, sorrow; some double helping of resignation, the faraway trumpets singing gratitude, understanding, acceptance.
after driving upstate we arrive at B. I circle the space. drive back away, quickly, too casually. I suspect P can see what I can't say, which is the immeasurable density of memories past, the enormity of a community, the way things shaped us, "patted us into being", as she says. what do you do after a community ends?
I remember us sitting all together, in a circle, looking into each others' eyes with hurt, sadness, gratitude, and love. many offerings burnt, many lessons shared. "let's meet back here in five years", H says. some of us murmur our agreement at that moment. it feels right, then, even if we knew that it might not happen afterwards.
what do you do after a community ends? how do you pick up the pieces? what I learned there was to try to understand, to wade into, to seek, to ask questions. will these tools work, this time? every sun has its shadow, every current its lee, every tendency its difficulty. when to contend with the possibility that I may never understand? or worse, that I might? because the answers are simple, the age old ones, written in historical texts, the same stories playing out, milennia upon milennia, because after all, the bodies we have are the bodies we have; ecosystems and ecologies of emotions, galaxies, emerging under our skin, plankton, microorganisms, fish, insects, plants, a huge ecology developing out of the same body. do you not also have a limbic system? your vagus nerve? they too, years ago, were livid, hurt, angry, confused, disappointed, disgusted, sad. and also: fearful, excited, terrified, joyous, loving, caring, grateful, accepting, thrilled, anxious, energetic, hesitant, learning. they too will; so will we.
so yeah. what do you do? where do you go, I ask, knowing that, actually, the answer to the hardest questions are probably the easiest to verify, hard to solve. p != np, no sir, these questions run on non-polynomial time, non-linear progress, answered through struggle, verified through a koan. we're already here, actually, I could say. but it still doesn't tell me the answer to what this thing is, what this taste in my mouth is, this thing that tastes of a place, of a series of dates and addresses in my phone.
of the times you thought 'but I thought I still had more time left', of the ways in which we always do.
--
I am trying to say, (to myself): listen, please? please, listen? to what's already here, you see?
--
from 10 years, 6 months, 26 days ago:
and there's just time, and change, and of course -- we will no longer be what we could be, but you know what? the most important-remarkable part is: _we will no longer be able to even conceive of thinking about whether 'we will no longer be what we could be'
--
letting it be.