this is just to say: Aftermath

25 June 2009

Aftermath

It's not that my return to SF meant that my internal _________ ceases flowing & churning. Of course homecoming is sweet in the pitch-perfect-pinch-of-lemonade-done-properly kind of way. Not bittersweet, but the slight perfect touch that is remarkable in its obvious difference from the cloying and incessant indifference the so easily flows in a lively city.

It hard for me to clearly remember what the salt crust of the sea felt like on my naked skin. In spite of my slowed pace and resistance, the city's pace sweeps me and I'm quietly managing against the current. I was happy to be back, sure. It felt nice to see familiar and friendly faces, to clasp dearly those few whom I love.

I want the slower pace back, but it is irretrievable and I am rueful for it. Things of course could not be like Kythera here in the city. No matter my wistfulness.

Being here again means that my body is tired, my chest struggles to contract, and I am again surrounded by selfishness and self-contained bodies. Yes, that existed in Greece, but I was easily isolated and free. I am not free here, and I resent it. New York, of course will be no different. I am always tired in the city. There is no one here to grasp my hand and tender me in exhilaration.

There is not enough time for self-reliance when I am busy departing and saying goodbye to people, towns, streets and food venues. I cannot just walk away without acknowledging that the last moment already happened, long before I knew it was the last. I am not mournful, I simply want time to expand for me. Custom-fit itself to my grief & departure.

Neither sad nor excited. Mostly weary and unmotivated. The flow is defeating and I lost my moment of freedom. It is hard to hear myself. The constant confusion and static.

I want the simplicity and exploration back. I have not forgotten how I am proud of myself, how I trust and believe in myself.

To be around others, no matter how kind they are, nor how much I deeply care about them, to be around others is to meet disappointment over and over, while maintaining a cool decorum.

That is how loneliness pathetically lies sprawled here. It cheats and lurks and clings inside to out. I am not lonely but I feel how it tries to wear on my body. I remain undefeated. But I want the free bliss back. My ownership of myself.

I resent the responsibilty that society imposes. I want to shirk it in the way I shed everything on the Grecian coasts. Even food here weighs me down. I haven't laughed the way I laughed out loud to myself in my little sparse farmhouse.

I want to return to Walden. I do not want to use words or explain myself. I want pure trust and desire.

Oh god yes, I want to meet the sweetness of desire again. I am trying to be patient and good. I want to be good.

Unsullied & carefree but not reckless with the vitals of others. Set me, do not shirk me to this other flow.

Tread.

from "Euphoria," by Sina Queyras

1

Dear Regret, my leaning this morning, my leather foot, want of stone, my age
Old, burnished and bruised, my hair lingering, my hand caked, spongy as
November my dear Relentless, my dear Aging, your voice tinny, dissonant
As Stein shot through decades of war and Fortrel, cocktails on the hour,
Zeppelins over Piccadilly, bombing blindly in the fog. Dear Skin, dear Tobacco
Mouth my refusal, my merely geographic, my fibrous strings for you: your
Abundant wit, your lack of shadow and still joy nosing the air. Each moment
Stretches toward you, your dry feet: I carried them, pumiced and peppery
Laid them where regret is a biscuit thing to lean upon and sweeten,
My hour of you, my cursive thoughts, a pulpit beating under these ribs.

2

Dear Time, you swallowed us whole, swallowed us lovely, sharp as bones
Crimping sadly under foot my benign, my flotsam and crabs thin as leaves
Your smoothing, your sinking in. Mornings or mooring, or wallowing
Jericho: tapioca air indolent. I am still there, supple and driftwood, you lovely,
You loved me, your memory dark and west, thoughts like tugboats stitching
The horizon, you pulling me, my pudding, my thin crustacean, sideways
In the late afternoon, your gaze, having so soon forgotten the sharpness
Of mornings, the bite of your look serrating the hour: my treasures, all
Of them, for the pleasure of that slice once more, of our dangling,
You and me, the lot of us in some car, driving some hour, mapless.

3

Under a spiderweb, a tire, slouched: flat, sad-lipped, I think of Newton
Of the original apple, all of these clones since, all of these scentless
Descents. I shake my glass, shake again, melted suffixes tinkling; observe
All things natural: foliage unfurling like old bills, wryly betraying
Your habits, like the dog who digs and rubs, the dog who whines, who
Paws and circles, you trace. Why is pain so much better than nothing? Or
The mark of it more understandable? Why is saying nothing so much better?
Your one-liner like blossoms, uplifting, your currents strap me to air, yes
I guess there is a little texture up here, and oxygen pure as baby’s toes
Which if I recall, are sweet as kernels of corn, if I recall so long ago.

4

To arrive is practice, conversation or conversion, a story over a field
My Sweet, of concrete or whispering, furrows of a path no longer, not
Sure, was there, and snow combed in curlicues and dog ears a zigzag
Through January. Sure you are witty, but are you any less romantic?
In my remembering, I have undone all my beliefs, it is a luxury to lay
Unencumbered here, or there, the bones flexed with tendons, the
Spine like a seahorse, the heart far from a cliche unless beating is
Innocent, though innocence is not as supple as you think, nor as flexible,
Nor as perfumed, nor convenient, or even clean: between things regret
Gathers force. I remember that day: it was cold and the coffee tepid.

5

The small red balloons like thumbprints, waves green as the brush of
Cedar, the wind lapping your hoodie, blind strings tap the air, camera
Bobbing like a dog’s tail. Such lightness, the dog heading off, all
The dogs of English Bay angling off-leash. I would follow backward,
Lay old maps on your white sheets, so sincere, I am in earnest for you:
We won’t regret having not yet knit our acrid puns and jaded barbs, nor
Having the wind slip in under our belt loops, though I gently refuse
Gor-Tex, and you bet I will not concede the game. Those small red
Balloons like tulips in your eyes specs of amber, an amulet, an avatar,
My thoughts of you fully indexed, ready to step into.

25 June 2009

Aftermath

(underbed stor)age