so, so.
an opening into the world.
yet another incantation sprouts.
--
wasn't this always about seeing what happens? this, on the page, letting the words fall forth, letting them tumble out, allowing that particular feeling latent inside of my fingers to take hoold and spool forth. was this an incantation, a moment, a revelation, a transition, a what? what did this mean?
what roils in my heart is a kind of tender magic. sadness, wistful joy, desire, longing, acceptance. what did it all amount to? someone at a picnic asks me, "to what end", and I hear the question but I let it go; these are not ones that I need to answer, right now. some questions are questions seeking answers, questions that craft a conundrum in their wake, not quite a chicken-and-egg but rather the creation of a slipknot out of a seamless line. a flick of a hand that can suddenly create a knot, or disappear it.
--
recently I was driving back from providence to NYC and felt it, that kind of eternal loneliness, or something. in the northeast it exists in the interstices between things, and appears to arise from suburbia, appears to manifest on the highway, appears to pour up in the night, I think, and I think that's the force that can keep NYC what it is; a fear against that something in the night. I remember D talking about it during college; at the time, I thought was a kind of city-kid fear of suburbia, something to do with stereotypes of stereotypes of suburbia that I wasn't really familiar with, but at least understood to have something to do with childhood experiences, associations of home, love, disappointment, family, heartbreak, all stuff of writerly origin, you know? NYC the city that people come to find something in, still.
but now I don't think this is true. now I think what wells up in these drives is just a variant of what's already elsewhere. it's possible and true that certain landscapes of over-optimized infrastructure might contribute kind of starkness to it, like a metallic taste that you might happen to feel on the edge, like only when you run your tongue over your teeth. maybe it's like a particular kind of way of drilling for groundwater, strangely (or not-so-strangely) over-extractive, like when you have a zit and spend too much time squeezing at it the wrong way, such that perhaps the deed was done, but now everything surrounding is red and enflamed and angry even further. like this, the drive back from providence was surfacing this further, surfacing a particular quality of worldliness, squeezing it all into a kind of melancholy entering my heart, holding my world.
and what of it? what does it mean? what does it smell like?
it smells like a history that has known what it is to ____.
--
어느새 37세가 되었다.
어느새, 어느새. 어느새 38세도 되고, 40세, 45세, 50세, 65, 81이 되겠지.
what I do have are these words of a moment, these memories of a life to mark me here and present. these have been my shimmering jewels, my love of a life, my hearth.
let me sing of where I am, dear future self, you who are older, older, younger, younger, you who are looking back at me, wryly, that wry smile.
I am 37, living in greenpoint. on january 6, 2023, we meet the sun in the desert. in april 2023, in death valley, I die a little. in the summer of 2023, I drive across the US, and find so many ways of living. I visit mercy hospital for the second time. I go see the blue house, and then the place I went to montessori, with the sharp left turn and the banana trees I swore I remembered. I visit the school in which I first performed magic, of dehydrated water, now a construction site, an appropriate end to a kind of memory. even now, a year later, snippets of vividity enter my horizon of awareness.
and then: a conference: and then: friends in la. and then: vipassana in the desert. and then: a return back. and then: I meet E. and then: we eat strawberries at the beach of the rising sun. and then: I say hello to the sun again. and then: a monk in red leads me to a frozen lake that whisper to me. and then: I sit every day, every day. and then: I apply. and then: E steps back. and then: I go to the water, and see the soft geese, and sit in the beach, and let my heart go. and then: I see the eclipse with mom and dad, a moment that cracks open the sky and then: I look mom in the eyes, tell her I forgive her, inside the still still quiet of a cabin-held-fire and then: I touch and overlap with E again, a sincere and pure-hearted singing of the strings I hold and then: E steps away, and we close a chapter, as I pivot to turn towards the future.
the world is opening, and closing. I am living, and dying. marie louise-von-franz says: the goal of life is to die. to die wisely.
I am sitting and finding shimmerings.
I am orienting and dreaming of a held focus, a self shaped like a cone, but at the same time I imagine I must follow the shape I am already.
when I flow, I discover parts of myself that I do not know. these words just arrive from me; my goal is to channel them, to allow them to emerge onto this page.
there is a moment in all of this. in writing this, I attempt to surf, or what I imagine surfing is like, catching the edge, trying but not too hard, holding but not holding, doing but not doing.
at least: this time, if I might fall, as I have done, I know how to get up. once C told me that the first thing you learn while sailing is how to un-capsize.
this was an important lesson, I remind myself. it taught me how to get up. when they teach people how to do backflips, it starts with learning how to fall down, and then to roll, and to get up, and then and to connect it all. when falling down and getting up happens in sequence, it becomes a roll.
here I am, rolling. hello, hello, hello, hello hello! I hope you are well! you who are older! looking back at me! I imagine you are thinking: "that was a special, special time." I am thinking this too.
and yes-and, with the infinite wisdom that someone of your past already holds, is and must and is already saying to you: "you are in a special, special time, too. let the knowledge of your _____ hold the point of the needle that pierces through the veil of the daily and allows the glimmer of the sun to shine through."
love you! -me & us