Slide past Toledo and Boston, straight on to Meredith, New Hampshire

funny funny - i see that everyone has demons as everyone gets chewed up by mosquitoes to varying degrees, as everyone gets tickled and cooked by the sunlight to varying degrees (does my skin itch because of bite or because of burn?), so i see when i look them over

we've been intoxicated for days, on a bender incommensurate to our actual needs or so they say, because apparently everything is alright, beautiful, good even. but i wonder what joke is being played on us that we are so delightfully tragic, so erotically bored, needing so much to stretch out our arms and grab. we're out here getting bruised up and crispy, stewing in juices we have injected into our brains.

groups, conflagrations, gatherings. we're in the middle of the burning man of the motorcycle community and i wonder how we all (not just us but anyone joined up for moments unforgettable) manage not to tear each other apart, how we keep things copacetic, how we manage to ignore the simmering ailments below our surfaces. POOR BABY, i say, what ails you? i really want to know. maybe we can make sense of this. we seem to me to be storms brewing within delicate webs of skin and hair. how do we manage? how do we not let the storm pour out of our insides through our nostrils and belly buttons or spit it up in a ball of bile-colored mucus?

but of course in the mornings the lake is cool and you can see straight to the bottom in the shallows. two swallows dip and dive overhead, looking as if they are trying to kiss in mid-air. my skin smells good. i find a fuzzed-over anchor and some empty mussel shells in the water. everything is delicious and the drinks are cold. i look at insects i've never seen before. i feel fantastic and more alert and ready than i have in a while even though i am sleeping far less. we all laugh until our stomachs hurt and we spill things and break things and clean up and take the recycling out and make plans for when we ride further down the coast. we play endless games of cards and we cook in the sun.

i say goodnight. get out of here. you're ridiculous.

a moment before.

readying
sweeping cleaning washing moving stacking chewing
transforming
the living room, once close and warm, is now echoy and the floors are aching for moving feet.
wondering, too,
and missing and loving
and aching and sneezing
and building and painting
making nests as we clear out hollows

"[the bride] walks to her husband's home, never looks back or she'll turn to stone."
i mean,
fuck some patriarchal short-sighted family-breaking family-defining bullshit,
but i think there's something about not looking back
after all, our history is in our skin and our skin is dead until we begin to dance.

tonight i will be gray with lust and love,
spirit-filled stone,
concrete and fantastical.
and we will dance and dance and if you doubt for a moment and turn, you will join my ranks.

b brought up a good point--
to be in nature is quite a thing,
hard to believe that it was always there and will be there whenever we want it,
or perhaps pause to wander with our eyes and hearts,
and in the mean time the city holds for us so much, something like tonight,
something like multitudinous explosions,
social experiments,
a different souvenier to take into the woods.

and like wide-eyed rabbits, strong branches, sharp thorns, tufts of grass, furry humans,
we can love many a stranger if only for a moment

tingle tangle...pull one string and the others feel it

I've been thinking about the worlds we build together. The vortex you force into being with just you and a few other people. Last week I was thinking about time travel and after talking to Lelz about memory and shaping of the past through thought and interpretation, I've been thinking about the tangles of reality-bending groupdom that exist beyond time and space (though they are infintely bounded to us) that we have forged in the fires of our hearts. Wormholes, of the non-physics variety. Gravitational pulls of the charismatic type. I'm talking about radiance.

Edward said to Jane, "I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you - especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, - you'd forget me."

And I believe that. It is the thing I have believed the longest. It is as close to a Bible verse or a benediction as you will get with me.


Do you know what it means to be a Sagittarius? I apparently can't believe in string. Knots should be beyond me. I couldn't tie my shoes if I tried. I should be warding off potential strings with a pair of trusty silver shears at all times. So what's the deal here? I am breathtakingly befuddled.

Where does all this come from anyway? Existence itself is an incomprehensible squall of accident and pure chance. A stew of unplanned happening, right? What then is the desire to frantically attach a web of strings to various creatures and persons and objects? And further to arrange the strings, to move and jockey and position one's self, to arrange those strings into a clean, pleasing, BEAUTIFUL in that it's meaningful way? Into a web, like a spider.

And the tangle of our veins. Here is a system I love: the cardio-vascular system. Perfectly positioned. But put one thing out of place and it all goes wrong. We build webs to match our veins, delicate as all get out. But we are capable of abstraction. We are capable of existing beyond what is natural, to rise above our nature. What kind of statement is that? Rising above our baser nature, is that not seeping reek of Christianity? But I think we could be more abstract. In love, I mean. In loving one another, we could be more abstract, don't you think?

And the second self? What if there is a third self? And a fourth self? More than one equal and more than one likeness? Or even, if there is no second self at all, no loss of you-ness because you never existed. What then would love or friendship or acquaintance-hood look like? No desire for completion, fulfillment, no unending search, no more Hugh Grant movies. Only contact. And really then, really, really, really, what would selfhood be? Could it be radiant, unshackled? Could we make defunct the phrase, "Defining myself by..."

I'm trying to say - I don't know if this is about me, or about you, or about us. I don't know if the horizon is getting blurry or if my eyes are getting worse. I looked to the internet (a new thing we are trying) and it said, "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: ... Post this address all over the Internet and curious people will click to a ... Dear Leticia, This morning, I looked up at the beautiful blue sky, ... Thank you sharing in this wonderful year with us! ... Love & Gratitude, ..." and also "It also makes me wonder if we can't administer oxytocin to ameliorate some behavioral problems. .... the jackpots of treats would soon come to outweigh the fear of the trim. ... I assuaged my grief and need for fur contact by knitting up all the yarn ... when suddenly I am hanging on to their leashes for dear life"

Well. So, yes, I'll be knitting up all the yarn. And kissing. And hanging on for dear life.

a thousand miles wrapped up in blankets

i slept so late today, droppeddripped into a dreamworld that wouldn't let me go.
at first i was at a relative's house with my sister. there were a lot of people ("relatives") i'd never seen before and the ones with recognizable faces also seemed like strangers. i think i watched porn with someone who claimed to be my cousin.
then we were in this hotelplace and we had to prepare a defense. we got into this court-like place and i was woefully unprepared, had forgotten all of my pieces of paper. i had a hard time stating my name. the purpose of the "trial" was unclear (it could have been a conference) but my sister and i were called upon to Do Something. luckily instead of a defense we turned off the lights and did a performance. i think we won.
back to the hotel, now in the suburbs in the middle of nowhere: i stole some runts and other candy from a grocery store with an unguarded back door (silly silly) and shared with my sister and some other dreamfriends i had met earlier that night. (one, for instance, had long long brown hair and a big black hat and wore all black.) we ate them in the hotel.
later becci and i were hanging out in the garden and i think i dreamt of trellises that grew high high and huge huge collard greens sprouts, racing the sunflowers towards the sky.

anyway i had like 13 hours of adventures in dreamworld. i wish dreams weren't so compelling. sort of. or just that i could wake up in the morning...this "rainforest" sound produced by my cellphone kept creeping into my dream and was very unwelcome.

also i am excited for leli's return!