POWER yoga (heated)

Now equipped with a Peppermint Patty I try to make sense of this mess.

I slept til 9:30 and pronounced that contrary to the plans we had made I would be spending the day in bed.

He was more understanding than I would have expected. So was I.




I laid there and I read the book for hours. Were it my copy that thing would be earmarked and penned to shit by now. But seeing as it belongs to the library the next town over I tried instead to commit the resonant bits to memory.

For most of those hours I felt like I was holding my breath.

If I let down my guard I might cry for years, and that would really interfere with the plans I have laid.


Still I am trying to let myself feel.

It is very hard, harder than I had thought, and I thought it would be hard.

It helps that Wilson stays with me, content to sleep through his breakfast hour in order to remain curled under the afghan between my shins. 

It helps to watch a movie in the middle of the day.

It helps to go to yoga.

It helps that he has quit drinking. Instead he buys me almond milk, Halloween candy, potato chips flavored like pumpkin pie. He retrieves my green socks from the bedroom and gently slides them on over my feet.

Thank you for curing me of my ridiculous obsession with love*

From the point of view of the obsessed, the best cure for obsession is possession.


I have felt anger and shame.



In truth the solution has proved a severing of options.



We woke up early and climbed the mountain.

At the top we could see other mountains. Many of them. We meditated for ten minutes (not eleven).



I cannot help you again I am sorry.

I am not always this selfish but I need to take care of myself, for a while.



I told him, I have worried that I made a mistake.

I told him, Sure, we can find a use for that ice.



Telling = a liberation. 

There are so many words I have not said.

I wonder if they would have changed anything.




I respect you too much to    .

He loves me much more than I thought.




I am learning to distinguish fantasy from my own life.

We are not melting. 





*Moulin Rouge

"Dialogue with an Artist" by Matthew Sweeney

the lonely

Incorporating the words of L.S. Lowry

I used to paint the sea, but never a shore,

and nobody was sailing on it. It wasn’t even

the sea, it was just my own loneliness.

It’s all there, you know. It’s all in the sea.

The battle is there, the inevitability of it all,

the purpose. When I switched to people

they were all lonely. Crowds are the

loneliest thing of all, I say. Every individual

in them is a stranger to everyone else.

I would stand for hours in one spot

and scores of little kids who hadn’t had

a wash for weeks would group round me.

Had I not been lonely, none of my work

would have happened. I should not have

done what I’ve done, or seen what I’ve seen.

There’s something grotesque in me and I

can’t help it. I’m drawn to others who are

like that. They’re very real people. It’s just

I’m attracted to sadness and there are some

very sad things. These people are ghostly

figures. They’re my mood, they’re myself.

Lately, I started a big self-portrait. I thought

I won’t want this thing, no one will, so

I went and turned it into a grotesque head.

memo to lowry

You’re right, there are grotesques who shine

a dark light that lures us like how the sirens

tried to lure Odysseus, and yes, maybe we

ourselves are among the grotesques, but

there are also the beautiful who, if we’re

lucky, save us from ourselves, and validate

the sun’s light, and maybe also the moon’s.

from "Nothing is Far" by Robert Francis

Nothing is far that once was near.

Nothing is hid that once was clear.

Nothing was God that is not here.

 

 

 

from "Last Hike Before Leaving Montanta" by Patricia Traxler

Sometimes absence can prove presence. That's not exactly
faith, I know.