the drive
a response to a letter
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as i drive, i imagine how to respond to your email. driving, one of my passions, fades into the background like practiced sex. gas, shift, mirror, blinker, glide, gas, shift, map-space-cars, gas, mirror-blinker, glide, gas, shift. the sound-vibration of the car guiding my body, my body a medium, a conduit linking the V-tech four cylinder electronica-drumbeat engine with the bird-splattered maraschino shell with the grainy petroleum canvas. all of us in spontaneous choreography, impromptu or die. my feet fail salsa and meringue but i can dance in these things as i dance in your words. i wonder what your physical presence feels like and my fingers search the leather folds at the base of the gear shaft.
i love your poems and letters. they have direct access. they make me feel joy and sorrow. i realize i respond to things, seek out things that can twist me. i crave movies, cars, landscapes, and creatures that can bypass my indices. and of course, touch. my disorder doesn't have a name, so there is no medication for it. my disorder is: i don't cry for months at a time. there is probably no name for it because our social mythologies tell us that being too emotional or too expressive is bad and weak. i empathize and channel, but when the channels get plugged up, there is no release. someday, i will cry, and i count the days. so keep it coming. if you want to please me - can you be there for me, when i finally cry?
i have some loose thoughts on immortality. i've always been a lover of mythology, of stories, and since i was a little girl i've wondered about that message that keeps cropping up about people wanting to be immortal and going to great lengths to become so, to the point that they abuse their power and become bad guys. that has always confused me because i can't understand what would make someone want to live forever. there would be so much loss involved. i also never understood fear of death. so many people describe a fear of dying. don't get me wrong, when i'm in a perilous situation i get scared. but what i fear is pain, not death. death doesn't seem to be anything worth fearing, really, but then i also don't believe that some asshole spends all their days passing judgment on people after they die (i can't imagine the dead being as stupid as the living). i figure my cells will know something, desire something, but they won't be enough of a team to have insight into the big picture anymore.
i have sympathy with objects, with built things, because they last far beyond us and crumble without our desire, left to their own devices to express memory and meaning... and yet in their decay they build our own history for us, a kind of reverse immortality that exposes the banality and futility of our linear experience of time and space. i guess that makes objects wise, and perhaps fortunately oblivious... or not?
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as i drive, i imagine how to respond to your email. driving, one of my passions, fades into the background like practiced sex. gas, shift, mirror, blinker, glide, gas, shift, map-space-cars, gas, mirror-blinker, glide, gas, shift. the sound-vibration of the car guiding my body, my body a medium, a conduit linking the V-tech four cylinder electronica-drumbeat engine with the bird-splattered maraschino shell with the grainy petroleum canvas. all of us in spontaneous choreography, impromptu or die. my feet fail salsa and meringue but i can dance in these things as i dance in your words. i wonder what your physical presence feels like and my fingers search the leather folds at the base of the gear shaft.
i love your poems and letters. they have direct access. they make me feel joy and sorrow. i realize i respond to things, seek out things that can twist me. i crave movies, cars, landscapes, and creatures that can bypass my indices. and of course, touch. my disorder doesn't have a name, so there is no medication for it. my disorder is: i don't cry for months at a time. there is probably no name for it because our social mythologies tell us that being too emotional or too expressive is bad and weak. i empathize and channel, but when the channels get plugged up, there is no release. someday, i will cry, and i count the days. so keep it coming. if you want to please me - can you be there for me, when i finally cry?
i have some loose thoughts on immortality. i've always been a lover of mythology, of stories, and since i was a little girl i've wondered about that message that keeps cropping up about people wanting to be immortal and going to great lengths to become so, to the point that they abuse their power and become bad guys. that has always confused me because i can't understand what would make someone want to live forever. there would be so much loss involved. i also never understood fear of death. so many people describe a fear of dying. don't get me wrong, when i'm in a perilous situation i get scared. but what i fear is pain, not death. death doesn't seem to be anything worth fearing, really, but then i also don't believe that some asshole spends all their days passing judgment on people after they die (i can't imagine the dead being as stupid as the living). i figure my cells will know something, desire something, but they won't be enough of a team to have insight into the big picture anymore.
i have sympathy with objects, with built things, because they last far beyond us and crumble without our desire, left to their own devices to express memory and meaning... and yet in their decay they build our own history for us, a kind of reverse immortality that exposes the banality and futility of our linear experience of time and space. i guess that makes objects wise, and perhaps fortunately oblivious... or not?