February 3, 2005

• Where to start.  I’m a jumble of tangents, with no one direction stronger than the next.  I finally got back out of bed at around 4:00 and on my way in search of pancakes.  Mostly I wanted to see who was up at this hour; who these graveyard people are.   

  
  

   

  
  

  I didn’t go to Seattle because of several things.  My house is past the point of being manageable.  The puppy has gotten a lead in our constant battle.  She brings things in from the garage, and as she gets taller she has access to new shelves.  This week, it was the painting stuff.  When I was on that walk admiring people’s gardens I happened to look in this one window and they had shit stacked right there in plain sight.  I came home and when I walked into my house I wondered how I could live like this, oblivious to the stacks.

  
  

   

  
  

  Also I had my writing class to prepare for.  I went last night and came away reeling.  J read in workshop and when he got done I started clapping.  Soon the whole class was clapping.  There was no question, in my mind, as to whether it was autobiographical.  He was describing a hot day out in the yard at home.  The main character sneaks a couple “pulls” off a whiskey bottle he had hidden out in the shed.  Apparently he was under doctor’s orders not to drink any more.  He finds he has to go pee but there’s someone in the portapotty.  He doesn’t want to go into the house because his wife, ever vigilant, will notice liquor on his breath.  So he’s trying to hold it, rocking back and forth on his heels, losing a few drops which produce a dark wet stain on the tan, khaki pants, when he spies his wife.  She’s loading the hummingbird feeder.  He’s rocking, squeezing his fists when the door opens and he practically runs the guy over on his way in.  But here’s why I clapped.  Once inside, and he describes standing there with only the left fist clenched (I was the only one who burst out laughing) He goes into great detail about the interior, describing the flies and the sunlight coming through slit above the door.  He starts talking about how smooth the plastic feels under his fingers and how he wants to touch that cool, green plastic with his lips.  I can’t remember if I said it out loud but I wrote a big YES!! On the paper there.  Then he launches into dialogue using the wife’s nag voice, she’s coming out after him. 

  
  

   

  
  

  The guy held nothing back and it’s why I’m so excited.  I can do that.  It’s not all about who has the biggest vocabulary.  The girl next to me read tonight, too.  She is afraid to do more than breathe in public.  Her piece was constructed well.  It was clever.  She personified a building and used it to give a history lesson.  The only problem was the building had no personality, just like her. 

  
  

   

  
  

  The other thing, and I can’t quite put my finger on why I am so excited about it, drunkpunches wrote beautifully about rain.  And when I was driving home after my pancakes I thought about why it had turned me on in the same way the green plastic on the lips had.  I haven’t gone back to read it again yet.  I usually read his stuff a bunch of times.  But I remember something in there about the rain forcing it’s way into – You should just go look – But something in me stirred at the reference.  And the nature of the stirring is what’s stirred me up.  It’s new.  It’s a different way to tantalize the senses.  Or maybe it’s an age-old trick I’m just now noticing.  I’m noticing a lot of stuff.  I can’t hardly sleep for wanting to stay up noticing stuff.

  
  

   

  
  

  Mostly what got me going is my new lease on life.  I immediately went to my tree to give thanks.  But when I got there she was covered in ivy, just like the first day I found her.  I will need to go back with scissors to really get all of it off, but I got everything disconnected from the ground.  It was so sunny and being back on the trail I’d walked for 30 years, I did the loop, walking through all those memories.  It’s been at least a year since I’d been there so it meant a lot.  It’s just too far to drive now. But it made the search for a new trail all the more urgent.  lionne, do you know the Wildwood trail? 

  • 9:29 am
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