Apollo

True myths may serve for thousands of years as an inexhaustible source of intellectual speculation, religious joy, ethical inquiry, and artistic renewal. The real mystery is not destroyed by reason. The fake one is. You look at it and it vanishes. You look at the Blond Hero – really look – and he turns into a gerbil. But you look at Apollo, and he looks back at you. The poet Rilke looked at a statue of Apollo about fifty years ago, and Apollo spoke to him. ‘You must change your life,’ he said. When the true myth rises into consciousness, that is always its message: ‘you must change your life.’” - Ursula K. Le Guin

I had troubling dreams last night. I was on a boat with my mother and others, in the Bayou, it seemed or someplace else mysterious. Something fell in the water, or someone, something that needed saving. My mother, who is historically hysterically fearful of water jumped in to save it. The boat kept going – leaving her behind.

I began screaming that we had to go back. We had to fetch her. How they didn’t understand such a bold move from my mother, who’s fear and panic in the water is inimitable. To risk what she risked by jumping in was more then it perhaps appeared on the surface. The boatman yelled that he couldn’t go back just yet. That he would, but right now it was impossible. I kept looking backward, stretching to see – but we were only moving further away and clarity was lessening by the moment.

Eventually the boat did turn around and fetched her from a medical unit. She looked pale and ashen, deathly really, and had a wound that had been tended, in the shape of an oval, between her ribs on her right side. It was though she had been speared with a sword and this is the mark left behind – neat, oval, and now sewn up. I asked her what happened, pointing to the wound.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I jumped in the water and that skin just fell off. I’m really not sure.” Somewhere along the line she had fainted, perhaps, blacked out and her memory of things were murky. “What was really disturbing,” she went on, “is that when I woke up I was on a cold gurney. There were dead bodies to the right and left. I was in a morgue. They thought I was dead.”

And we sat in silence pondering this as the boat swiftly carried us forward.

It’s unclear that she accomplished her mission. Unclear that she saved anything.. only risked.

And this morning I have this strange sensation of riding in a bright colored car – clear blue sky, soft warm wind, windows open, breeze in my hair, and I’m waving… waving while on my way. It’s all very… sunny.

Tick Tock

To always be intending to live a new life, but never find time to set about it – this is as if a man should put off eating and drinking from one day to another till he be starved and destroyed.” - Sir Walter Scott

I found a big monster tick - swollen, engorged on a feast of blood – dead on the living room floor this morning. It had to be attached to one of us. I’m certain it didn’t just wander in like that and die.

It’s important that I remind myself, more than once it seems, that living life differently isn’t pinned to decisions about work. Decisions like this just don’t wander in like that – they’re rather attached and sucking the life out of you before they fall off and happen. They’re greedy.

Look Here

I have died so little today, friend, forgive me.” - Thomas Lux

I reach out and up - hand extended into all this space. It’s as though I’m volunteering. It’s as though I’m trying to touch someone. It’s as if I’m reaching for something to grasp, hang on to, cling to – if I found it, touched it, I’d be chosen. Saved.

I can’t hear your voice in this room. Were you speaking to me? With such profound patience and silence I sit waiting for your single sibilant yes.

It’s raining here, above the 37th parallel. The towering spikes of campanula lay prostrate across the garden, heavy with sky and wind. Handfuls of purple flowers kiss the earth. In my white terrycloth robe and red plastic gardening shoes I trekked about the garden this morning, tying things up.

I would make a wonderful corpse – the way I love the smell of dirt. Ah, but I’d miss the taste and smell of coffee like I already miss tobacco. I imagine there would be plenty of things to miss.

And here I sit amidst all this life, squandering weeks, days, minutes, seconds as though I’m a rich man as opposed to the free raggedy popper that I am. Aren’t I pathetic – like a skid row bum drunk on sweet basil and Gerber daisies -content to wallow in the filth, blind by addiction to pastel columbine petals blowing across cut grass and bleeding hearts twining with digitalis in the shade of the faux orange tree. Just who do I think I am? Fancying myself a princess of sorts – ruling over the lilacs and rosemary. A grand ruse.

How do I find the words to apologize for all the lies I have told myself? I learned them from you, my friend. I learned them from you. You with your lives and all their invented meanings. Look here.

The Way I See It

On my doorstep, in my kitchen, adversity melts like ice in a highball glass. That’s the way I see it sometimes. Inverted reflections, changing shape as the minutes dissolve into dark spirits.

Water Lilies

The head cold, sore throat, achy, fever, chills thing persists. My throat feels like a gravel road or rather perhaps more like stippled, bulbous, fleshy alien pods. Hmmm.. pretty. Perhaps these bulbous throat pods are indeed the seed casings for Monet’s water lilies. Stranger things have happened. It could be, you know. It could happen. It could. Oh shut up.

ThePerfect Spot

I feel chilled and achy and my head is foggy. It’s the beginnings of something. Isn’t that the way things go with beginnings – so clear something is coming and yet an absolute mystery as to what and how far things will go? Where this starts and stops will soon be revealed, in its own time, not to be rushed, it’s inevitable. So here I sit in the inevitability of life – wondering why it’s so painful and uncomfortable.

I’m off work again this week, or rather, I was off work except for Wednesday and as it turns out a bit of Thursday and Friday as well. I’m feeling bitter. Maybe it has to do with the chilled-achy-foggy-head feeling and less to do with work. It’s all quite a bit like Monet’s water lilies - from close up I can’t really tell what it is and at varying distances it’s a blur but there’s a perfect spot where I’ll see it clearly and beautifully. I just haven’t found the perfect spot yet. I’m looking for the perfect spot.

Okay. Breathe. Maybe I’m realizing the perfect spot. Okay. Maybe a little pain and discomfort has got to be part of the perfection sometimes. Perhaps it’s a catalyst or maybe the supernatant. Whatever the case it’s somehow part of it - not to be run away from, shuffled off, healed, overcome or escaped. Okay.

Postcards From The Cornfield

I was flying back from Los Angeles Friday before last I think it was. I’d taken a brief stroll on Rodeo Drive before an early afternoon lunch meeting nearby. That was a reminder to me of just how uncool I am. It crossed my mind that if things had worked out with the lover-who-shall-not-be-named that that place would be the context of my life. I would hate myself and feel out of place – I’d likely never really know that it was the place and not me that I loathed. It’s so difficult to make distinctions sometimes.

Flying back from Minneapolis a few days ago now. Things that must have once seemed commonplace strike me as odd. And the mere realization, the third-person-looking-in moment of awareness, colors events with an invented and surreal quality. I watch. Very through the looking glass darkly or maybe brightly. Serves to show me how much I’ve changed (and perhaps how much I haven’t).

I’m not saying good or bad. I’m just saying different. Leave the judgments to those who thrive on them. I’ll leave it to the you and the other to name which is which, what is what, who is who. All I know is that at once I felt like two ends of a magnet, both repelled and attracted. It was all laid out like an unmovable feast before me with a sign that says, look, but don’t touch.

I’m left with old familiar feelings. My heart and eyes too wide open - when to hold it in my vision I must put my heart and mind in separate rooms until it’s safe to come out. I tell Ed that I feel sad and wished-away. (What part of our history is reinvented and under rug swept?) He wishes me back.