Something To Write About

To dissolve into a fine mist. A rain soaked forest of evergreens, like motifs of weeping. Such like that feeling, crying of despair, but a certain lightness, to rejoice, in the exhalation of crying itself. To turn to hermetic leisure and never witness another. The one in the mountains who doesn’t speak. In my heart, I know that it wouldn’t help, yet time moves so fast. Let me go of this! I want to be a slow unfolding. I want to live in a moment of not much at all, which is everything. I don't want to pay bills. I want to scrape myself against a rock and, it hurts, and feel it and, it hurts, and I can feel it and I know that it is real. When that, what else? Where is Brooklyn? Never mind coordinates, can you tell me in rivers and trees? If so, why does it hurt, to be here, to be elsewhere, to be anywhere at all? I think if I could stay very still in one place I would not lose the grief–and that is the thing, I could never lose the grief, no matter what I do–I would not lose the grief, but I could turn into a stone and let time turn me into sand. Only then, only then could the wind whisk me away.

It isn’t so simple. I let water run over my face as I beg more of myself and if I could scream, I would scream, “It isn’t so simple!” It never is. I end up in rooms with people, where we talk, we eat, and the time passes through us. I remember when I first arrived in this place, I thought, isn’t that what it means to be somewhere, to be expected at some certain place and time, to be asked through doors, to be told of a location and know that I am wanted there? I don't know anymore. The trouble is, I wouldn't have to try to disappear; I wouldn't have to abscond to some great yonder up north. It is so easy to forget me. I think that it wasn’t always this way, that something, sometime, shifted and only now may I be forgotten with ease, but perhaps I was always the one begging an invitation. Sure, when I arrived, people would ask me to be someplace, but I did arrive and I walked here with my own two feet. Now, though, where else could I walk, to arrive? There is nowhere else. There is never anywhere else but where I stand. I can't prove that there is anywhere else, because, then, I would have to go there, and, then, there would be here. There is nowhere else. There is nowhere to arrive. Have you ever been alone at a bar, waiting, not for anything in particular, but waiting for something and knowing the whole time that you are waiting? Oh, I could just disappear. I wouldn't even have to try, if I stood very still. I could just disappear.

I am always told that I will have to do it myself, but that has never been true. Someone has always been there. Someone has heard the vegetables, someone has grown my tears, and someone has dined with my joy. Still, as long as I can remember, I have always been there. A participant. One always has to offer something, even if one is unaware. I say that, because one always is offering something, but I tend to be a bit analytical about offerings. In every moment, I wonder if it will be enough. Mathematics is an interesting way to experience insanity. Anything can be an equation, if you want it to be, yet, in nature, have you ever seen mathematics with your eyes? I hope you have felt it. Maybe, if you are with a curious mind, you have prescribed it, and maybe, then, do you know the madness of which I speak.

After the beach, after the swamp, all of the letters in all of the words would float around and dance for me. When I heard language, I would experience three or more interpretations at once and, then, the sounds could read my mind. It was intimate. It was terrifying. With a more casual ambivalence, the sounds can guide me through my subconscious and teach me what I do not already know about myself. I’ve come to realize, though, that only you can teach me about yourself. This begs the further realization that I never did ask you enough questions. Sometimes I worry I’m just like my mother.

Time is too fast. Time is too fast and they always say that I have so much more without realizing how much that sounds like a threat to someone like me. I miss you. If time were a gift, I would be stuck in a forest with you, asking you questions for almost forever. I would not always like your answers, but I would hear them. I want to trust you. It has become so difficult for me to trust anyone anymore. I can’t even trust myself. I don’t know what I don’t know about myself and this will still be true, even when I am dying. I want to trust you. You seem so sure of yourself. I want this time.

Now, though, I have wasted it, as I so often seem wont to do. I am sleepless and I cannot even afford a cup of coffee. I don’t understand how to waste time, though, because I don’t know how to spend it either. The best is when I can do both at once, I think. I like to paint or to write music. Worthless! Worthless! Worthless! Yet, it is only through worthlessness that I can hear the songs of some almighty voice. I do not mean to forsake riches, no. I like comfort. I like luxury. I mean that only worthlessness has shown me precipitation to true dedication. Why do we play guitar in these fetid basements? Why do we make up games to hypnotize? Why do we paint on the ceilings? It can only be valuable if many decide it is valuable, but if it is worthless, we will still do it. Why? I have starved myself for art and even I know that that is gauche and cliché, but I have starved myself for art anyway and why? This dedication cannot be tethered. It is dedication for dedication’s sake. Alone, it may very well be madness, but in company, it is a portal to I don’t know where; to everything that ever has been, will be, or could be, I guess. Time. Worthless! Worthless! Worthless! Try as I might, I cannot seem to spend it and I cannot seem to waste it. It is nothing but an unknowable fright.

I will never know what it is like to dance to death in Strasbourg, in 1518. I will never know the perimeters of dedication, nor the center. I will never know what it was about that book that caused some spark in you. I will never know why, though the writing was so old, it seemed like something you could have found in my own journals. I will never know why we met. I will never know what it means to me. I want to ask you about all of these things, but I also want to ride a horse and write poetry about it. I will sell my blood. More than money, I will remember the people who taught me that everything is nothing but something to write about.