I confess. One cannot put all the noise on a peppercorn into the written word. Burnt black Indian spice from an old Christmas. I started using it whole instead of crushing it to gray comets with a stone against the wooden cuttingboard. Still in the back of my throat even now, my teeth unleased undeniable hot present tense experience. The taste overshadowed the dirty risotto I had tried to spice well last week. Both had been stuck to the food dinged saffron side of my bowl that had been sitting relatively empty for over an hour and the black circle and white risotto grain had been listing upon their sticky surface miraculously until I reached mindlessly under the fork with my fingers.
In pre-epistolary thought, I ate virgos and being a girlfriend and earth. The black sphere burnt me and I welcomed it. Like Sappho says. Eros Hoptai! Love you burn me! And then I seemed to make that deviled thinking my very matter according to my theory here! So like a recursive formula, I turned upon myself. Yet every one of those spicy heartpearls could be strung, seen and looked at differently, unmagnified or given no dignity. But I dove for the dirt, my fingers pinching for a second black sphere, now excited by the novelty, and yet capable of tasting the moment and the worry like two nipples of equal delight.
I reached into myself for the substance of my life since last I wrote,and found the worry pearling in my heart and mind, as though nothing had been removed by cleansing or by writing or by thinking or talking. It sucks, I think, to look back now to March and realize where I left off. Three coins. A prayer burnt on a roof. A glass of water hung in midair between greed and self-sufficiency. Am I undone by all this time away from contemplation of my excesses? Or was I never going to learn anything by my attempted expurgation?
The question remains. Since I can change my life and compose my own mind. Why do I choose not to? Controlling intake seems obsessive. Observing every intake had begun to scare me. Big U- turns of thought lead down to quick emptiness.
At the very least I could devise some fucking mental trampolines. Like the no-meat trampoline. I spring up in my spirit to have built in a strong point in my will. What about a sturdy no-worries ladder with rungs made of reality?
Here is some reality:
Lately I have been eating less and sleeping randomly as though I shut down at a certain point from too much intake from life. I need reflection. I don't want to lose the hard work. I will have to look back and collect the good bits.
My stomach now rumbles each day, familiarly. I wait more and take in smaller bits. Today, I had a cup of coffee, a senior's brownie from Joey's school, low eco-footprint asparagus from jeff's garden. The students. The people we know giving. Could we only eat what others feed us? No. We must take in some and reject others. We are no capable of digesting every single thing. It is too much.
I looked at the meat that was on the table yesterday and It didn't look like what I am made of. Red and brown. It had demands all over it. I liked the way the asparagus folded in my mouth and sucked spit out of my glands with its astringent balsamic tartness. I liked the way the potatoes were like grains of warm snow and the way the chives from the garden were oniony.
As I sat at the table, happy to have food and a smiling virgo mind that enjoys life and knowledge and who unfolds maps, and ideas the same way; and I didn't want to say to everything there, why does this hurt? Why does a bridge hurt between people, Is there no permanent solace? No real forgiveness after 35 years? Because there was good and understanding and yet there was this force of dark matter there.
But then later, once we left your parent's house, and worked our way into and out of feelings about just that very thing in our own life. I saw the way stepping out of the car and into my own hands feels. I gave myself a moment to think about the way people hold on to hurt. Hurt, hurt hurt. A pearl, a worrying, and tiny black peppercorn of burnt indian spice lodged inside your arteries keeps crying. Why? What did I do to disappoint you? What did I do to disappoint you? And I say to that... There was a small nodule of something strange where I wasn't felt.Who could say what was?
But I didn't think about hurt because you said. Give me something I can work with. I stretched my tight car accident calves and found the answer. Found the hope, Found the future. And the little spicy pearl disapated when you took my hands as if to say. It is that easy. A rung on the ladder between our bodies.
