a man/me/then Jim
If I've done well-- ya know, I mean, crossed my legs meditated on the ground, sipped the coffee I made the night before so it is cold like ice & bitter as hell, if I've done well, I get up off the floor and move to the desk. I try and do the things that have been done on tables. To put my own neck into place to find wherever I a pressure point is behind my eyes, to remember what a doctor said about sinus cavities or the cause of headaches or to change a level of pain from 8 to something lower-- because I don't really even believe in that. On a scale of 1-10, I pick the highest number and that will be the best.
Then I will think about my grandmother's wedding ring or how it is funny the things we can do to other people. "You can do what you want," when he is upset he says "It's not like I own this down." And when he is pleased "It would be great to see you. Amazing." And I am a woman holding a phone to her head, who you to ask the man on the other line how telephones worked.
It's just a semi-precious stone but there was this time and place in Sicily when everyone was starving and my grandfather wanted to give my grandmother something that she wore on her ring finger, torn to all from a life of picking olives. No one could read. Maybe by then they could read some things. Before they died they could read. I would watch them. I'd sit with my grandfather, he'd be half awake on his favorite lazy-boy. The carpet that was once a dark brown perfect 70's shag, planted like a layer of soil or salt for thirty years absorbing all our stains of childhood had been replaced with something white & rough on the skin. He'd wake-up during Westerns and point to the television screen "Quello e John Wayne" and after viewing the man with the cowboy hat on, he fell back asleep. And I went to college close by, but the thing was I didn't live close by. I lived a thousand miles away. I wanted my grandmother. I wanted my Patron Saints. I wanted to hear how they got from there to here or how they could still believe like this.
How the arranged marriages didn't leave them more exhausted.
And then time passed suddenly, because that is all another story.
And when everyone was dead I wore the wedding ring on my finger.
And when I left the place where I am right now, I left the ring too. I packed so quickly. So these things too, on a scale of one to ten, when we measure our feelings of positive thinking, of cognitive power, of pain, these things too can be fault. My naked hands. I apply more layers of red lacquer.
I am the woman on the phone & you were too good to be written about in a small box, and I was going to be too good to write about it. Until the mornings when I have finished my scheduled activities and it has been a year of attending funerals.
When it feels so ninety-four, so twothousandfour, so fatal and facetious
and I don't even drink my coffee black anymore.
Do you remember when I could use whole names in year? You can check if you want. You just go to "archives" you can click "2002" and read about the first semester of my senior year of high school. Or you can read about 2004 when Brett was still alive and I was sure I loved him in dorm rooms, in Ohio. Or in 2006, maybe 2007 when I was first in New York and all men were so exciting and equally nameless that there had to be things like "editor from Spin magazine" and "guy from bar where we watch Mets game" and "Gregg's friend R" and other things that have no meaning now, even to me. The string of letters afterward. "J was over until 4 AM, it was really sweet, he brought over all the ingredients to make hot toddies. After I said I'd never have hot toddies before."
And I am skipping entirely over the years in between of twins and car accidents and England and moves because full names where used, and I don't know if I remember what it feels like to be that sad, or if you the reader has been able to follow this paragraph at all.
So, in the mornings. That's when these things are here.
Soon I'll do this all properly. I'll register the domain names again. I'll find the letters for the men so I can tell you about the events. I'll make my warning labels larger.
I'll write a little bit less about the dead or dying.
Though
We'll see.
There are other things, and I promise to tell you more about them later.
with love from Portland.
Then I will think about my grandmother's wedding ring or how it is funny the things we can do to other people. "You can do what you want," when he is upset he says "It's not like I own this down." And when he is pleased "It would be great to see you. Amazing." And I am a woman holding a phone to her head, who you to ask the man on the other line how telephones worked.
It's just a semi-precious stone but there was this time and place in Sicily when everyone was starving and my grandfather wanted to give my grandmother something that she wore on her ring finger, torn to all from a life of picking olives. No one could read. Maybe by then they could read some things. Before they died they could read. I would watch them. I'd sit with my grandfather, he'd be half awake on his favorite lazy-boy. The carpet that was once a dark brown perfect 70's shag, planted like a layer of soil or salt for thirty years absorbing all our stains of childhood had been replaced with something white & rough on the skin. He'd wake-up during Westerns and point to the television screen "Quello e John Wayne" and after viewing the man with the cowboy hat on, he fell back asleep. And I went to college close by, but the thing was I didn't live close by. I lived a thousand miles away. I wanted my grandmother. I wanted my Patron Saints. I wanted to hear how they got from there to here or how they could still believe like this.
How the arranged marriages didn't leave them more exhausted.
And then time passed suddenly, because that is all another story.
And when everyone was dead I wore the wedding ring on my finger.
And when I left the place where I am right now, I left the ring too. I packed so quickly. So these things too, on a scale of one to ten, when we measure our feelings of positive thinking, of cognitive power, of pain, these things too can be fault. My naked hands. I apply more layers of red lacquer.
I am the woman on the phone & you were too good to be written about in a small box, and I was going to be too good to write about it. Until the mornings when I have finished my scheduled activities and it has been a year of attending funerals.
When it feels so ninety-four, so twothousandfour, so fatal and facetious
and I don't even drink my coffee black anymore.
Do you remember when I could use whole names in year? You can check if you want. You just go to "archives" you can click "2002" and read about the first semester of my senior year of high school. Or you can read about 2004 when Brett was still alive and I was sure I loved him in dorm rooms, in Ohio. Or in 2006, maybe 2007 when I was first in New York and all men were so exciting and equally nameless that there had to be things like "editor from Spin magazine" and "guy from bar where we watch Mets game" and "Gregg's friend R" and other things that have no meaning now, even to me. The string of letters afterward. "J was over until 4 AM, it was really sweet, he brought over all the ingredients to make hot toddies. After I said I'd never have hot toddies before."
And I am skipping entirely over the years in between of twins and car accidents and England and moves because full names where used, and I don't know if I remember what it feels like to be that sad, or if you the reader has been able to follow this paragraph at all.
So, in the mornings. That's when these things are here.
Soon I'll do this all properly. I'll register the domain names again. I'll find the letters for the men so I can tell you about the events. I'll make my warning labels larger.
I'll write a little bit less about the dead or dying.
Though
We'll see.
There are other things, and I promise to tell you more about them later.
with love from Portland.