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may 31. the crunching of toast in
a far-off lonely place you're a razor in the silk aching to be
found "let me smell your fortune," i said, grabbing his hand. i opened the fingers and snuffled at the warm palm. califone came last night. it was very wonderful. i love califone, and i love my bicycle. besides that i mostly just sleep. and read my books. i got wonderful books to bring home the other day: the stolen lake - i was lured here by the edward gorey artwork, but it looks pretty good besides. the phantom tollbooth - an old favorite. replacing the copy i gave away about five years ago in a brief fit of affection, along with naked lunch. don’t give your books away kids, especially not to boys. mrs frisby & the rats of NIMH - of course. summer of the monkeys - i hope he never captures the monkeys! return to gone-awry - it is about a girl and her friend julian looking for ghosts in a dilapidated victorian house on the edge of a swamp. brighty of the grand canyon - i think this is the only marguerite henry book i didn’t read. i hold donkeys in very high esteem. recommendations are also welcome. may 29. my favorite things to do often involve destroying the body in little ways. "i’d rather have a porcupine try to get in bed with me than an aloe plant." " ... " winter would come. the hedgehogs would bury themselves. i lay quiet in my treestump with one paw bent around my nose. the depth of their coma. the sound of their tiny hearts barely beating. solace of looking for lost fish: he gestured at the lighthouse. things to make (to eat) BESIDES DESSERT spaghetti with sauce and fruit punch tofu omlette (scramble with soymage) variations: on a plate, on toast, with salt hashbrowns blackberry pancakes good desserts include cake, pies, and fruit cobblers root beer floats sundaes with syrups and pecans vanilla cokes are good, but nowhere to be found the sound of flip-flops galloping on the sidewalk. the sound of propeller seeds spinning towards the ground; i catch one in my mouth. dissolves like a snowflake. i ate a slice of blueberry pie under a tree today. what do you sound like, by the way? it's hard to tell from the name. i play accordion and saw; my music basically sounds like a girl with her instruments interspersed with duck quacks and goose scratches and occasionally singing/mumbling/hiccoughing. i live near a pond. may 28. shady sammich don't eat a peanut butter sandwich. those're pretty shady. may 27. bury the bread deep in the sky dust of a young hand. spitting pictures spilling stars. it was the first rainless day in a week and i went across town on my bicycle. i was mad for a cupcake. i’ve been hearing rumors about new chocolate ones at the french meadow bakery. i don’t like going there. it makes me so hungry. i don’t even like walking past that blasted place, past the people sitting outside eating all these wonderful looking sandwiches. salad! bowls of chili! soup! it makes my body ache. i want to hide in a corner and leisurely munch a tempeh reuben while i stare out the windows at the clouds.. maybe i could bring a coloring book! anything to pass the time in peace, numb my stupid brain. i could’ve. i had a little money. but i bought a fuckin’ cupcake for $2.25 instead. i hate having money in my pockets. i just buy about five different desserts and then it’s gone and i feel sick. i really need to start eating things more nourishing. i can feel it. my body’s just going to kill me someday. after the splurgement on cupcakes, i still had an awful lot of money left and went to the record store. i couldn’t think of a single thing i wanted. it made me sad. i bought tickets for califone and red house painters shows coming up. it’s such a joke that i live in a real place. may 26. Storks were rare among carousel beasts because the sharp beak tended to injure young riders. my stomach buried in a stack of straw. were i not devoid of feeling. i miss summer reading lists. i miss to kill a mockingbird and tuck everlasting. i even miss where the red fern grows. it isn’t so many years later. i’m 22. i come home, climb in bed, and read five pages before falling asleep. it isn’t because i’m tired. i remember how it felt to read all night and not realize it was morning until i saw the windows lighten. and to keep on reading anyway, because the pages under my right hand were growing thin. when you’re young you just kind of devour things because you think it’s an inexhaustible world and you have all this catching up to do. it isn’t. you don’t. summer hardly means anything anymore. today i made badger decoys and hung them all over the house. i swept. i laid down. i got up again. i have a fantasy of trading houses for a night. i want to take only my toothbrush; i want to sleep in someone else’s bed and read someone else’s books and listen to someone else’s records. i thought about it all day. then i ate a piece of pie and a box of soy dream sandwiches. eating is a sad hobby. i hated the red pony. i hated a day no pigs would die. i hated old yeller. i hate the literary tradition of killing animals in order to turn boys into men. maybe what i’ll do when i grow up is rewrite all those books - in mine, the kids die instead of the dogs. i want books with dead kids at the end. dead and bloody children with their entrails falling out. may 25. this weather has got to go. tonight it rained on my cake. that was the last straw. may 24. i keep having these dreams about my house burning down in the middle of the night. only i'm awake when they happen. may 23. another morning in bed, under every possible blanket. i don’t like this sort of rain. i like rain with vehemence. with sailing clouds and dark bright colors. goose-grey and gunmetal. "he thinks you’re obsessed with him." " ... " "are you?" "no." "you don’t stand a chance." "i really don’t need to hear this." "sorry." that being the same night, there in the dark, that i belted him in the left eye. abruptly. without a word. an accident, of course. sorry. when i become a badger, i will sleep all day on a bed of fiddlehead ferns. my home will be the inside of a hollow stump or something at the top of a hill, a place entwisted with honeysuckle and abundant thistles. guard hairs will protect me from your farflung stones. i will wake to watch the weather. the world would be a cushion of music and outwardly flapping wings. i will hear the rain. the chanting of clouds. the crush and bustle of stormswept branches. as a badger, i will not be obliged to report on any of this. may 22. then again, i can always content myself with the electric blanket and make the rest up. the moth let me touch him tonight. he lit on the back of my hand like a parakeet. it's so nice because you forget about a moth. it isn't like i come home and rush to greet him; i wouldn't even know where to look for him. i'll just be brushing my teeth and then he appears. this is the nicest thing someone can do for someone else. lesson 4: it looks like rain. lessons 5 & 6: umbrellas with protruding metal bits are more trouble than they're worth. and you are not mary poppins. lesson 7: mountain sun limeade has honey in it. you do this every year. really, three bottles? come on. lesson 8: envision a duck in human clothing. is the duck wearing a disintegrating pair of converse or rubber rain boots? lesson 9: pneumonia is not an "adventure." may 21. there is a beautiful black moth trembling in my bathroom! this is the second time i've had a moth visitor. last summer, in this very same month, one came as a prelude to the music tapes. i remember the moth dying just a few days after they left. their souls replaced each other. who will die for this moth? maybe it will be me! a drawing of big wig made long ago in my copy of the velveteen rabbit. i wash my hands and feel like i’m in another century. a freight train. everyone else has gotten their checkbooks out to pay for tickets. i thought we were supposed to be stowaways. when the train stops moving, my job is to retrieve the fruit and place it in the grass. there are grapes, apples, and avocados. there is a bathtub. i sit on the edge of the tub while he takes off his clothes. he shows me movies of myself cantering down the sidewalk unaware. i remember the moment they were taken - we were both in the trainyard, or on a platform in st. petersburg; he said "moran!" as i went past, and i turned around and stared expressionless into the camera. he has the ability to stop his heart without opening his mouth. the first dream i’ve been able to remember since all the other ones spent unspindling the mystery of my lost bicycle. may 20. the voice of closed eyes having eaten only ginger snaps, i made preparations to venture to the store for some dinner. i put on dry socks, dry pants, my wellington boots and a rainjacket. but i got in the car and sat tranquilized by the sound of the rain on the roof and windows; i simply could not move, or did not want to. my only hope was one of being carried away by rising water. i think it would be fun to go on a tour like that, floating along while remaining motionless in the car. i have a great talent for holding still. i should start challenging people to stillness duels, with wonderful prizes at stake. still hungry. may 19. it happened again last night, between low and home, that it felt suddenly magnificent to be on a bicycle. so many dead leaves in my heart and at my feet. so many birds hoisted. the wind blew for me, in me. i could still see the cars. their bodies moved between mine; i felt the weight of them, and felt the weight of them moving. i wasn't scared. i know now what it is like to be touched. it makes no difference to me. followed, lost, come back to.. this feeling of going, capable at least of that. it means so much to someone who's rendered dumb with fear every time she stands up. i don't know what to do with myself. i don't know why i have a body. the movement of a bicycle was born in the stomach, surrounded by blood and a mashed-up sauce of pie and figs. i lean across it. we are starting to smell like each other. they had low pillowcases for sale last night. i made fun of them, but secretly i thought they were quite handsome. i like these days when there seems to be no temperature at all. i know in the morning the pull that there is to spend a day at home. i hardly know what it is like in the daytime, or remember how it feels to read on the porch where my chair is, in a room lit with turkey wool. it's the temptation to make a sandwich at some point, alone in my kitchen.. stupidly hoping someone might come along and interrupt my jelly-slathering madness. i think grape or strawberry. grape. it's been so long. may 18. are you as guilty as i am? i went to see low tonight. low is worth having my lungs filled with other people's breath and cigarettes. it was pretty. the last time i saw anyone play in minneapolis was, um, also low, but it was snowing then, so that was different. really! saw at least half a dozen people i knew there and managed to talk to one of them. somehow i never feel i am allowed to say more than two words to people when we encounter each other in neutral places, even if i'd like to. or try to. or probably fail to. a chickadee saw me standing in my underwear this morning. may 17. the first lesson was the sound of my name. the second was the shape of the letters, and the third was how to form them. when i wrote my name for the first time, i knew i was beginning a book. i realized the name, all that i was, was merely a word. i eventually forgot what it sounded like. in life, i have not heard enough people say my name. it is the most amazing thing when someone does. he knows my name. for one moment it is a brain other than yours who tries to give some shape of meaning to the wadded sack of guts and feelings that stands before it. people think i hate babies. i don't. they're just kind of depressing. A crossroads, said to be treacherous. But quiet. A man was seen there whittling wood into a whistle for a boy in an impeccably pleated black smock. It makes him look like he's in mourning, even in girl's clothing, in a landscape whose every leaf seems in place for eternity. On a treetrunk is a tattered auction notice officially posted during a regime to be followed by one only slightly bloodier. my new lifelorn bicycle came home yesterday. i gave it a bubble bath and a safe place to sleep under the trees. other gifts are forthcoming: a horn, a lantern, pennier baskets. we rode to work last night; it was my first real time back on a bike since i got hit. i won’t go on university anymore, even if i’m late; i went on the residential streets and over the little plank of concrete that suffices for a bridge. everything is still tinged with that pain. and we don’t yet trust each other. it’s a kind bicycle. a little more reluctant about journeys than my old one; i have to actually steer now instead of conveying secret messages through the top of my spine, but a kind and beautiful bicycle. i forgot to mention a fleeting moment of togetherness with my best friend last week, before i went to vermont. he walked past when i was standing outside the store for a moment with a bottle of grapeade. he said hi. i waved and mumbled joyous greetings. he was with friends and they must’ve had some destination. if he really is walking around in dinkytown all the time this summer maybe i could at least invite him to see my store, if not be my best friend. may 16. wide awake and hiccoughing, listening to red house painters. my lungs still hurt, even with face half-buried in the blanket. i just realized this song is about a cat. i can stop being jealous. i've loved a cat. it is not unusual for a girl of twenty-two or even twenty-three to quite suddenly rebel against her own breasts and lop them off with the nearest knife. may 15. Voices from the nettle path: Come on your hands to us. Whoever is alone with the lamp, has only his hand to read from. may 14. you don't have to pull down the shades when you go to sleep here. it is still dark outside. deep in snow, geese and moths. then again, i haven't had a muffin or piece of cake in three days. (pant pant pant) may 11. i think it’ll always be like this. sometimes in our sleep we’ll still see each other. the trees will be gull-enswirled as you start to say something; my eye spins thoughts into water. it'll be grey, like a death of icicles. we’ll sit together, like soaking in a common grave. the water rising up towards windows. zwei Mundvoll Schweigen. may 10. a world rich in anniversaries i think it'll always be like this. sometimes in our sleep we'll still see each other. the trees will be full-grown as i approach your ghost on a stranger's porch. in a tangle of sweating initials; i'll pick you up and push you home again. dragging your tires like entrails through the leaves. it's a beautiful day. i wish i had a cup of soy nog to drink beside my window. may 9. me and hen are walking through the neighborhood after 1 am. this feeling has been with me like i encountered it in a dream - somebody is keeping a cage of white ducks in their garage and i have to find them. we’re walking towards home. moonwardly. i looked at everything, the trees and myself, which were not illusions because of the compulsion to speak of them. there were smears around the moon. it was hovering like a wish in the water. i crossed the street and up onto the sidewalk. i almost went home. i took off my flip flops and went the other way, up the street. there's an old red garage. it's next to a house next to the big house on the corner whose yard i like to run through at night. all the lights everywhere were off. i was marching up the driveway. one of the windows was smashed out. i looked in, i wasn’t breathing.. i quacked twice. it was black and i couldn’t see anything. then i paused to listen for any response from the ducks, and took my first breath there. it was the smell from the chicken factory. i can’t say how scared i was right then, or now. i keep having very specific feelings that i can’t identify at all. literal feelings, like the sensation of having a heavy rubber bracelet around my neck. i thought i just heard a sound on the back staircase.. the empty staircase at the side of the house, by the porch where my bike was stolen, the one whose outside door is locked but whose inside door empties right out into my room. i woke hen up but i’m still scared. i keep thinking that stupid guy from lost highway is going to show up and stand there and look at me. i wish i could float through the ceiling and up out into the sky. after yesterday, i thought about how i had not seen my best friend in more than a month, or exactly a month. the three words; a feeling as though being pierced by slugs. i already know what it’s like to see a person i’ve been taking places without actually inviting them - i realize, finally, they weren’t with me. until then it feels like a real experience. i have a memory of it. the night leaves gathered in me, and we jumped a fence to climb other staircases. because i wrote it down. because that is the realest thing i can do. tonight at work i was window-gazing and suddenly he walked right past the store. my notebook was in my lap; i’d written "icicle shadow stuffed with cucumbers" just before i looked out. he was with somebody else and staring at the ground, and seemed to be having a sort of conversation. he was smiling. it didn’t disappoint me to discover that he spoke. i felt happy for him.. because he was alive and he was not me. i once saw him sitting in a pair of socks and felt i knew what it was like for him to be alone. that is the whole reason i like him. the whole attraction in one second. i think it’s so amazing to live in a place and see people you know. at the end of the night i walked past the tiny little place where my new bicycle has gone to get repaired. i looked at it through the window. i wanted to go be with it. dear bicycle, i shall not call you bike, you were green, like so many of your generation. i don’t know why. our friendship will begin on the other side of this journey to vermont. a whole flight of knives, like geese; fourteen plates of snow. i caused quite a stir at the co-op today when i announced my wish that the brand new carrot cake who was basking in the bakery case be cut asunder. the person behind the counter frowned and called me lecherous. he told me i should pray for forgiveness as the knife passed through its throat of lemon tofu frosting and into the moist innards. my protest that i had wanted nothing but one piece of cake for the past three days fell upon deaf, muffin-stuffed, or otherwise impeded ears. as usual it was nice cake. wonderful things i have gotten for being hit by a car: free bike offer of a free bike drinky crow t shirt a piece of bread (with raisins) may 8. being around other people is usually like the only part of myself i can feel is the one that’s a hundred miles away. when i have nothing to imagine, or think of, or especially write, it is the most undesirable place there is; it is like a coffin. sometimes it really is like i’m going around the world already inside my coffin. i wonder what i’ve done to myself to make it this way. my friend gave me a bicycle out of his garage. green! samuel beckett had a green bike with a red rubber horn. honking the horn was a vice for him, it brought so much pleasure. i wish it was winter again so i could feel close to samuel beckett. They marched on 12 foot stilts, and I marched in a wheel chair so I could play saw may 7. things to do this summer: work meet new bicycle record badger record help save animals visit music tapes wait and wait and wait. may 4. it's just been that kind of life connective tissue that binds the corridor of tornadoes. i can't see the point of patient love when everyone just wants to get fucked it’s rather uncomfortable to wear pants after scraping off your upper thighs in the road. so today, when it was time to go back to work, i just stayed in my nightgown. it was nice! my nerve endings didn’t have to touch anything, and three people told me i looked like emily dickinson, all in one single day. i figured i would wear my nightgown for the rest of the time until my skin grew back. and maybe even after that, too. it is always a secret thrill to be emily dickinson. i imagine what it would be like to wander around a dark house with a half-eaten piece of pie and glower out the upstairs windows. except i don’t know what sort of pie she liked best. tonight, the muffins were uninspiring. i shuffled around the grocery store in a frenzy, picking up things i would never want to eat, like cans of pumpkin puree, and pretend to read the labels while really wondering what the hell i was going to have for dinner. then i had a crazy idea: i shall cook! i never cook. i made noodles with tempeh and spaghetti sauce. i put it in a bowl and everything; there was a lot of it, kind of almost sloshing over the edges at times. as i sat down on the floor to eat, i hoped to myself that i would not splatter red sauce all over the nightgown. one second later, the entire bowl was in my lap! boiling hot! hetty-spag sauce! all over william burroughs’ beautiful nightgown! it was too his nightgown. he died in it. you don’t believe me. there’s blood on the sleeves. his blood. it looked like i had just given birth to a litter of piglets. the sauce dripped in placenta-like pieces all down the front of my nightgown. i gave it a washin’ in the tub. scrubbed the stains with bubble bath. i threw it out on the roof to dry - i hope nobody STEALS it. afterthought: "hetty spag" will be a good name for me if i don’t get to be shulamith. hetty spag's favorite sort of pie would most likely be pecan, which sucks, as vegan pecan pie is a difficult task or so i remember it being. may 3. did pee wee find his bicycle at the end of his adventure? i can't even remember now. maybe i will start believing my life again after all this. right now i just want to be very quiet. non-fiction here feels really awkward.. if my friends in minneapolis would keep their eyes peeled for my bike i would love them even more. it is a creaky old yellow schwinn 3-speed cruiser weighing approximately 200 pounds, with a bell and a basket and a tin penguin with moving flippers. last seen last night, in a dream, with its tires deflated. may 2. porridge, my bicycle, is gone. GONE. after the accident happened, i couldn't find my bike lock, so i wheeled it to the side porch.. and i left it there, in all its smashedness: dented frame, pedals that wouldn't move, my penguin mascot loosened and flipped upside down.. who knows what else, i really didn't look at it too much. you couldn't ride it. and still, somebody took it. it's gone. i feel like i have a bunch of wadded-up socks in my throat. fuck. i wish my life was over. i loved that bike. i’ve been in bed for the past two days. it hurts to put on pants. i can’t really write or think about anything. i wake up with these words in my mind and meditate on them for hours. ‘antwerp’. ‘treacle’. ‘bun’. when is the last time anyone ate a ‘bun’? i am quite fond of baked things; i eat muffins and scones and sweetbreads and biscuits, but a ‘bun’? no. sorry. i don’t have a lot of unread books in the house right now. reading these paul auster essays from the art of hunger. i didn’t realize someone could like beckett that much and be that boring. this erudite stuff is just so dumb sometimes. like in one essay, no, it was an interview.. there’s an essay and an interview with edmond jabes. one of them, anyway, was about language and memory; he was trying to say writing has nothing to do with imagination because it is an art of words. everyone uses words to communicate (as opposed to paints or trombones), and everyone attaches different meanings to words based on personal experiences. for a writer, he said, behind each word was something that had been lived, which imagines nothing. that’s stupid. it’s really stupid. for some of us who are writers (i’m not naming any names here), our relationship with words is, and has to be, an imaginative one. personal meaning is sometimes something you have to invent for yourself. that takes imagination, buckets of it, especially to feel like it’s real. there is conscious and unconscious imagination - i let the unconscious part of my imagination choose the words because i trust it more than i trust myself. well, because it’s better than i am. it’s smarter than i am. sometimes it takes me months to realize why i’ve chosen a particular word, but it’s always been the right one. there is always some convergence with another thing imagined. they mentioned a line from jabes in the interview, "When I was twelve years old, I lost the sky." they asked, okay, why twelve? why not ten, or fifteen, or why not simply "when i was a child"? then he explains how his little sister died in his arms when he was twelve years old. he was trying to act like this was really subtle or something. my left hand does not want to talk anymore. here are some more details about my recent adventure: i was riding to holocaust class in the rain. i was approaching a crosswalk and someone there decided to make a (illegal) right turn on a red light. he did not look up before he started to turn his van, therefore driving into the intersection right where i was. so that is the lucky part, if there's a lucky part, which is that the car that hit me must only have been going about 5 mph, or whatever speed it is when one is just moving forward. so the front of the van plowed into my left side and i was thrown from off my bicycle and into the middle of the street. all these people came and threw tarps and blankets over me and it felt like i was being buried alive. i saw my blood on a yellow tarp. that must have been quite a show. the person that hit me got out of the car and came over.. i remember there was a big rainpuddle and i could see him reflected in it. he looked really worried, and i couldn't speak at the time, so i kept thinking there was blood gushing from one part of me or one of my legs was on the other side of the street or something. he was in a van, some business van, like maybe for the electric company. the police came and wrote a report, but i don't really know what it said. no one asked me what happened. somebody should at least pay for me to get my bike fixed, or bennington. "chest wall contusion" sounds a whole lot prettier than it feels. april march february january & december & norris & the dreaded biscuits |
