Hear/Say

The sheerness of the madness you have when the gladness takes over the badness but you realize with sadness that nothing will continue as it has. That it’s never painless to be famous as you become friendless or as poorness gains friendship. That circumstances make dances with your personality and morals as you become fancy the more it takes to please you.

In Seattle we’re sunless but there’s never less water than a lake and a sound; in Chicago it’s endless… land, and Michigan stretches to the Arctic or nameless lands beyond the paleness of the water touching the sky in all its blueness–

As I weave through happy pedestrians, of mommys pushing strollers trailing packs of kids waving sticky hands and sweating sweetly their mouths are sprouting pink “blahblahblahblahs!” of questions, exclamations, experimental sounds forming the foundation of the words they will use for the rest of their lives (Chicagoans stretching their a’s as far as they can go)– how will they experience meaning and its forms, of symbols and metaphors creeping into their imagination or leaking through their ears like a constantly dripping rusty pipe, drip drip dripping, dropping their words like careless pennies tossed into the cracks of sidewalks or baking in the sun (hot little buttons waiting for a superstitious savior to scoop them up into the hospitably warm darkness of a jean pocket)

These images are fluid. They flow into each other.  Morphing in form and consistency as natural as watery sand, or pillowy thighs, or strawberry lips. Once I read a viking romance novel that described  nipples as raspberries; I read that passage aloud and laughed heartily.

Love is mythical; it is a story already told, like the American Dream or Cinderella, where you compare yours to what supposedly Should Be; most base it on the good, when like anything on this green earth it should include the darkness, the darkness of Love which can morph into hate quite naturally as the stars burn for centuries until the mass is so condensed their is only blackness, confusion, a hole of despair (as far as the rules of physics go). Love is light as is can be heavy. When you love someone you love all of them; finding fault leads to finding more faults, until the disgust and contempt takes over and the monster you’ve made your friend out to be stands next to you and smiles sweetly from the shadows of memories (i.e. “who they used to be” and “the person you ‘fell in love with’”). Why no, I do not love you anymore: goodbye. You walk away steadily, as if a star in a fashion show, as if Marc Jacobs were clapping behind you with his tan, oily skin and bright, smiling eyes, twinkling with his diamond studded (and also tan) earlobes, as if you had donned Swarovski crystals as lingerie because “you’re a million dollars, baby”. Even if you aren’t, convincing yourself of that lie is just as good as the dream of love.

You’re married. You’re married. You’re married. GOOD ONE