this is just to say: Catch Up & Cessation

30 July 2009

Catch Up & Cessation

It's been mostly rainy, or the sky pregnant, threatening with rain since I've been here. It's been a week, now.

My first East Coast storm, complete with true thunder and beautiful lightning. Enough to startle, my eyes to widen.

Today, we biked home around 1 PM, just before the rain broke--the sky was that stormy shade of grey, and thunder broke out in frightening claps as we sped down one way streets in Brooklyn.

It made me feel alive, and I marveled in this newness. It reminded me of when I experience first things in Sweden. I know that I will look back upon these first, fresh new moments. I should not rush my arrival, but still.

It makes me extremely uneasy to not be at home, to not build my home yet. I was a regular pity party today, in bed, on my computer, feeling fat and sickly and lazy. Mostly, it is difficult for me to not have a task to do. There is really nothing I can start right now since I'm flying to LA on Friday, and moving on Sunday, when I get back.

I've already prepared for everything else. I don't really have money to spare to go out. So I feel trapped. Then I feel sorry for myself, worrying about money, about how maybe this is all a mistake, and I'm going to regret this youthful foolishness several years down the line.

I hate worrying about money; not having a job is really scary. I can't be as carefree. I'm trapped by my circumstance and decisions. I know it's temporary, but I worry a lot. I can't help it.

Mostly, I think my body is yearning for comfort, the body at ease beside mine. Laughter, and lazy days to ourselves in our home(s). I do not yet have that, have not had that since before I left for Greece.

I'd be a terrible backpacker. And hobo.

I know I should be patient. I just wish it were pouring right now. The rain only comes in flash floods. I wish it would stay steady, like a shower, so I could feel it in so many ways in all the minutes.

It's warm, but not as hot as it could be for NY. Still, I take cold showers to lower my body temperature, and it's almost like a gentle, scolding slap in my face to stop feeling sorry for myself.

Diana, take care of yourself. I haven't been eating right, sleeping well. I need to stop passively feeling sorry for myself. Clean up your own mess.

I talk to my mother more, and she's nice on the phone, which I'm not sure how I feel about it. But for now, it's a form of comfort. I'm not alone.

I'm never alone, I just have to accept what is offered, or at least, what is close to me, however many the miles.

I did not sleep because I kept replaying you. I do, I--

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.

30 July 2009

Catch Up & Cessation

(underbed stor)age