Healing a wound

The external symptoms pointed to collapse, although the collapse directed itself inward, and thankfully space and time allowed for the containment of the festering. For it did fester, indeed, for some time, who could expect otherwise? The surprise came not from the pain, welling up repeatedly and in the most inconvenient circumstances, but rather from the moment of relief, the day when, peering into the crux of the matter, they found forgiveness.

Because of some video I watched last night

His dilemma presented itself as follows: to trust in his own soul, accepting his own power -- or to spend the time fretting and sweating over the nothingness that he felt certain was creeping along behind him, threatening to overtake him with its breathless murmurings. At these moments, it seemed to him that the universe would collapse on itself, its vastness contained on the head of a pin, the instant of intersection between his own fate and the infinite now of creation held for a stifling moment, after which one of two things inevitably happened: the he who was he before he was born would break through to the other side, run like hell for the border, and make something kick-ass out of the agony of the preceding hours (usually followed by a shot of whiskey); or he would succumb to the pounding rhythm of mortality and the imagined limits of our meager lives, and lose the rest of the day to a haze of doubt and confusion (usually followed by a shot of whiskey).

Motherhood

It's not uncommon to think of death and taxes at these moments, when they present their certitudes to solicit my surrender, or my enlistment. Don't tell me that an good idea cannot be lost -- a thousand brilliant drops of insight and beauty disappear each day with the bang of a screen door.

And do I love them any less because the darkness feels dark? Because I feel a separate pull to know them, to know myself, and to struggle like a warrior who, at the pivotal moment of battle yields to the pull of the Valkyries, knows the righteousness of his sacrifice, and yet weeps at his own death.

Perfect

After so many years, he finally stopped her one morning as she rearranged the dishes he had loaded into the dishwasher the night before. When will you cease this habit of creating your own prisons? he wanted to know. Perfection is a concept who's usefulness is limited to mathematicians and bees.

I walked away

I walked away. Yes. For you, for your false attachments, for your dreams of going deeper into the dream, for your hopes of connecting to undercurrent, for your aspiration to sell your soul, for this I crossed the bridge and burned it behind me, cut the rope and set adrift. No oars, no life preservers, just the dingy and damn if sometimes I don't want to jump out and make a desperate swim for the dock.

But the days of fair sailing keep me at it, keep me in it, keep me adjusting the sail to the pressure of the winds, keep me blessing the currents that I battle in my restless, sleepless sleep. Yes. The currents carry me, fuck the motors. I'll have no more of that folly.

USPS

It wasn't until weeks later, when the letter from the library arrived via the US Postal Service, that she realized exactly her error. As unconsciously as she had executed the act of misplacement, still, when she saw that the books, now six weeks overdue, were considered permanently lost, she recalled that afternoon, the turning into the Post Office with Hildilid's Night and The Mitten and then turning out of the drive-by drop-off without them.

She had been thinking of something else, of course, as usual, as something else is infinitely more interesting than the downtown traffic at 3:47 pm on a Tuesday afternoon. That is how it came to be that the library books, rather than ending up in the library drop box, as they properly should have, and as was her every intention, landed in the drop box of the US Postal Service post office just two blocks south of the library.

Milk and honey

The other day she visited my house. We sat on the couch while the kids played in the next room, sat cross-legged and comfortable, and she said, you know, I am just constantly irritated. And I wonder, is this the new me? Is the new me an irritable mother? Because I don't really like to be this way.

I knew what she meant. We laughed and I made some tea, tea with cinnamon and lemongrass and a hint of chocolate, and we drank it iced, with milk and honey.