(no subject)
This was an experience
dropped back into my body hard
shifted two vertebrae in my neck where my head sits
slipped a disk
and slightly smooshed a nerve
after a series of incidents like falling off a porch roof
and down some stairs at the airport
then being in a minor car accident
it felt like dodging bullets somehow
or being tested in some way
some direct result of ignoring the physical container in favor of work
for a little too long
mind/body split showing up in lightboxed black and white
corporeality trying to jump ship and go play
life grabbing me by the scruff
and moving me back to stillness in a way I couldn't refuse...
The first few days they didn't know if my neck was broken
so I couldn't move much
after that was nausea and tinnitus
numbness and a spinning sensation that went on for several weeks
and would drop me to the ground with no notice
one night my room was like a rough sea and I couldn't stop vomiting
at the hospital they gave me fluids
I imagined myself true as a carpenter's level and took a cab home
I couldn't judge space
knocked things off tables
fell down in public
and took crooked photos.
Worse than that was the healing
which woke me one night with right hand twitching
teeth grinding
lip biting
a feeling of ants crawling up my arm and across my face
they said the nerves were sorting themselves out in the way they do
and it was a good sign
but lordy I had nightmares
dreaming with eyes open and getting that nasty overlap
I was my great-grandmother being struck from the sky
(1982, she lived)
there was a family tree like forked lightning
and at some point a brachiation like kali ma
one thousand phantom limbs like my own
I woke with the memory of a different accident
a long time ago
where I burnt myself in some fucking-around explosion
and came to with sixteen hands laid on me
and a preacherman at my feet.
Being a kid I was really freaked out by that.
Plants may reference up to four generations
of non-Mendelian code for repairs
When I became a young lady
going to seek my fortune or whatever
I went west and left my virtue for collateral
with the son of a glossiolalic Pentecostal preacher
and still don't tell dreams before breakfast
all this must be in the fabric somewhere
some ping with the old-time ecstatic
and the howling and healing.
After this I read somewhere that nerve impulses aren't just electrical
but based on a certain resonance
a song of sorts
not knowing what else to do I put on Amazon icaros while I slept
and went to redneck bars in the valley
belted out Patsy Cline standards to drunks under a dusty blue spotlight
and from a red plush couch with good beer
watched David Eugene Edwards play to a crowd of ten in small space.
One day in the yard there was a dry-erase board with two words:
ayahuasca ceremony
and a phone number
our landlady was cleaning out the garage
I called it just once
there was no answer.
I started to feel better and the blue jays near our house took to dropping
little pieces of calcite on the roof in the morning
When we smile we show our bones.
A few weeks ago on highway one
slightly to the left of a solid t-bone
and everything went slow like cliché sci-fi
the other car bouncing off in trajectory
two billiard balls or ballerinas
I swear there were dotted lines
dance steps to this
they came to a stop on the edge
front wheels spinning over the ocean
My other housemate
previously institutionalized
merely shrugged and
began rolling a spliff
This life is something else.
I find myself surrounded by strong women
H on my doorstep after so long
on hugging her I'm rememberng her house up north
the colors of the afghans she knitted through long chemo sessions
the framed picture of her holding her black belt
One afternoon K and I drove to Pinnacles in hundred-degree heat
to look for condors and explore a cairn
under a manzanita tree she took out some almonds
and told about the time she
worked at a Quaker daycare in Ramallah
bullet holes in a bright-colored playground
with the Dead Sea beyond
Nosing around the Rispin mansion
on a Sunday afternoon
Calling up these elements
strange and painful and informative
stronger for having been flat on my back
steadier for being dropped to the floor
Believing these days in the struggle building strength
continue to let this trend break me bit by bit
pushing out what no longer works
and doing what it's meant to do.
The harm that's healed in a thousand ways
and I'm glad to have passed through.