And I went to sleep again, the taste of the watered down cider in my mouth...I could smell whiskey on the pillow next to you and that is such a rare scent that it only reminded me of my own worst hangover feelings. I could only kiss your cheek and fall back into a few hours of hydrated rest. Skip back to hot wings, eaten with no ceremonious look to your eyes; late night fat is dangerous and I knew it so I took a spoon of lethicin to induce some bile, skip back to a bunch of funny faces and you looked so young in them, like twelve. Laughing, you were sort of letting the cats know you were drunk and you picked each one up to declare this fact, and then you picked me up and told me. It was sweetness. We both had tea and you wanted to go for a walk and instead...
Hot wings Spanish on our tongues, a typed address glanced at in your wallet so-be-it, you are eager to perform and to be taken in by every beauty man or woman straight through the front door of an open heart, to co-exist with me in all of this,we were with "your students"--the black boys who came in on cell phones to get some chicken. I wanted to remember the way it all felt, nervous, wonderful, your arms around me, the umbrella in my hand. I knew we only had to drive a mile home.
My new companion Daniel was in the rain when we left the wind-up space. He looked, as always it seems, critical as he sucked the smoke in and peered through his glasses blinded until our eyes met, which took time. This time he was critical of rain-liking people.
Inside I had eaten wasabi peas mentioning the subjective nature of these kinds of writings, and I have to add all the ingredients quickly so I don't forget, graffiti, copycat smelly charley feet, chromosomes beoming butterflies on Dan's painting, Joey's arm snaking around to hold me to him while Natasha unabashedly grinned, her helpless bangs licking her chin, and his fingers warmed my body through my beige shirt, pulling and possessing in clear language. I could stay watching the scene behind me, like gold sun dancing on turquoise water around her eyes, but my lover's voice echoed calm reassurance moment after moment until I was lulled into hearing only the thoughts of my Sierra Nevada induced loquaciousness and to look only at the grey dusty page of the city paper. This moment I shared with Daniel, who, full of slicing critique, might make a good writing workshop voice actually. I drank only sips when I wanted sips, tried not to punctuate too heavily with glass-raising. Daniel and I agreed that the internal fire is easier to see as a cyclical thing if one has power over it. One does not jump from one's burning building in suicide if one has the sense to see that they are building fires and carrying oily rags around themselves. In the case of David Foster Wallace, the fire was perhaps strong, and not of his making, and hence he joined the ranks of those leaping from the Trade Centers seven years ago, taking his life. Some times, those who make willpower and imagination their strongest suit, still cannot find the next line to write beyond self annihilation. So it goes...I kept turning back to look over at Mike and Joe and the whiskey glasses which my liver declined, save one butterscotch moment when I tried it. MIke from the I.E reading series was pouring out names of poets and their eras, Phyllis Walen,..Alice Notley, he said each name like he knows their mothers and it would be painful not to know them in a lived life.
Joe was writing them down, describing the bookstores of the library district in Mexico City brought back the yellow dusty smell of those places. He is someone who will get the books you recommend Mike. I think Mike understood that he was dropping names like a foreign earthworms into New American dirt. They will insinute their names and times into the vast mind of Joe and he will never forget your friendship Mike, I thought. Open hearts are good for open minds.
Earlier I had eaten a ham sandwich and sun chips, heart racing from just returning from a long drive. I had been at the co-op in the student union, in a nice buzz of a day. Just drank twig tea impulsively. I went in to get a coffee but got tea instead. I was going out to meet Scott for a moment and then off to meet Bassim for colloquial egyptian conversation practice. I heard 'Hi', and then Dr. Morreau stood there with a book on Personal Identity. I looked at the front cover and pointed at the title and said 'Haven't you figured that one out yet?' I felt high from his bizarre energy and sudden presence such as only someone who knows nothing of you can do when they want to know more. I am not so used to being approached. 'I am just getting some tea' I said and he sort of smirked and turned away. Not really polite, just like a ball in a pin-ball machine that hit another doinging red and white flashing light, and was gone.. I think once I had the tea I saw my new friend Henry who had shown me Darwish's "Why did you leave the horse alone?" a beautiful collection of arabic and english poems translated by Jeffrey Sacks and I just enjoyed that tea all the way to the end of my conversation with Bassim and then I called Joe right away, excited to have lived a whole hour entirely in Egyptian. And earlier this morning I had felt a pain in my stomach so severe that led me to tears, but when I loosened my pants I felt it subside and suddenly beseeching allah and llegba was unnecessary. You had made me a bagel with cream cheese and we haven't drunk coffee in days. You called me pretty and kissed me goodbye. I love mornings...I always feel sad to know we will spend the day apart, because your hand in mine is so true and you lift my hand to your lips, but I was so happy to see you sitting in the window sill, our rose tucked inside blooming two orange flowers with your care to protect it from the storm; the first evident feeling that rushed through me when I saw you with your Chilean author and your feet up on the bookshelf.
