Siddhartha had often heard all of this before, all these numerous voices in the river, but today they sounded different. They all belonged to each other: the lament of those who yearn, the laughter of the wise, the cry of indication and the groan of dying and all the voices, all the goals, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world.
-Hermann Hesse
The River October 14, 2008
I am still thinking about this: October 14, 2008
In Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke says, “The highest form of love is to be the protector of another person’s solitude.” That’s what I want. For other people to love each other without having to partake in them, to possess them, to allow them to be their own inside their solitude, to protect that. I wish people respected each other’s aloneness. I wish I could write something very beautiful and erotic without worrying about people wanting to use me to fulfill some fantasy– which I have no control over, and often, has nothing to do with me– inside themselves. (Kristen Kosmas, writer and performer).
-Cunt
Cup of Empty October 14, 2008
One of my regulars came into the clinic today. We watch him closely because his depression is unstable. We get along well, him and I. I remember his words from his first visit. ”I am so sad. I have nothing to do because there is nothing I can do.” I’ve never seen him look anything but empty. Old and empty. He is a big cup of empty.
He was different today. It was only a few seconds, but it was there. Today, for just long enough to catch, his posture and expression changed. I’d asked him how he was today, a question I’ve asked this man on many previous visits. Today, instead of grumbling at me, he lifted himself up in his seat, looked me in the eye, and said, “I voted today for the first time in my life.”
One Act Play from Longwood October 14, 2008
Sarah: “Hey Aden, how much is the Wahl?”
Adrienne: “What is the wall?”
Aden: “The what?”
Adrienne: “What is the wall?”
Sarah: “The Wahl 7-in-1″
Adrienne: “What is the wall?”
Aden: “Uh, about $30.”
Sarah: “The Wahl is a plug-in vibrator.”
Adrienne (quietly, deadpan): “The Wall is a Pink Floyd album.”
Aden: “QED”
Remember where you are October 14, 2008
Yesterday, especially when the motor was running but also slightly later when even silly tunneling vision with hands could not make the stars brighter than the parking lot lights, I wanted to fill up the tank and drive all night. I wanted to ride until the city dulled and there was some cliche field to stumble upon and lie in belly up for a few hours in the company of bugs and the practice of losing the nervous censor that pushes us to hold the breadth of our words in our guts. But then, perhaps the motor itself was censor breaking even without the bugs or the belly up or the field. Perhaps the driving was there and just smelled more like decaying animals than trees. Perhaps the field was there, masked with litter and paint stripes. I am learning to be where I am.
Lessons from Psychometry October 14, 2008
I spend five hours with her. She tells me a story about riding a camel in California with her sister. She has to tell me the story three times before I understand. I say she told me a story, but actually she pointed to a picture of a camel while trying to force the words “rode,” “California,” and “sister” out of her frozen or shaking vocal chords, adding motions to sounds when she could.
Earlier that morning her doctor told me her vocal chords paralyze a few times every second. Okay, I think, we’ll go heavy on the writing. She can write out her answers instead of speaking them. Seconds after meeting her, it becomes apparent that she will not be able to hold anything in her tremoring hands. I try to choke down any comparison to my current meditations on voices, meditations where I am thinking about my Dad and his vocal chords. Truthfully, I am not interested in refusing the comparison.
Here’s the important part. Her vocal chords paralyze a few times every second and yet from nearly the beginning of our five hours together she begins to try to tell me about her home life. She knows it will take her this long to tell me, this long for her to build up the courage, this long to remember the words, this long for her vocal chords to not paralyze in the right spaces within the words she remembers so that I will be able to put enough of the sounds of each word together to understand her meaning. She talks to me about the hardest and the heaviest with a vocabulary that is limited by education and brain damage. I have to ask her to repeat herself often. The gravity of what she tells me is enough that I know there will be no more tests today and an hour of talking with the doctor instead.
This is how it should have been from the beginning: “How are you?” with enough time for anyone to answer.
When you say it cannot be done October 14, 2008
There is no way for you to do this, to launch yourself into me whole and dripping, and yet you must try. Grow bandsaws in place of hands. Cut down the failure of my ribcage. Nail new wings to the gimp of your heart and whistle it home. There is no way for you to do this and yet you will have done it.
Love is Unfashionable October 14, 2008
While love is unfashionable
let us live
unfashionably.
-A. Walker
More Pieces October 14, 2008
how to squeeze honey out of a rotten orange
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don’t let anything go unnoticed. what you loved & what you didn’t love & what you still love. you are rolling over on your back. you are bellyup. it’s easier to breathe this way. you can feel your eyelids & you can bite your lip & you can touch your skin & you can & you can.
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our hearts will move like this.
& like this.
no more hanging on.
just on.
I love a woman with a silver tongue. October 14, 2008
“The literature on the subject is improving in tone, nevertheless there is perhaps no other field aspiring to be scientific where flagrant personal bias, logic martyred in the cause of supporting prejudice, unfounded assertions, and even sentimental rot and drivel, have run riot to such an extent as here.”
-Woolley on sex differences assumed by evolutionary theory and psychology
