Blue is the moon in her transparency,
And dark the sky, when she looks to the star
Without whom we would all be rock. We would
Be third person, un-personed remainder
After love, with unbound freedom, to scream
Anything and go unheard, unspoken.
So, blue becomes the face of unrequited
Silence. Earth, displaced from selfhood, touches
That, the final leaving off, so that it
Might grow conceivable. And that being
It, empty of form, pure as blue, still as
Clear water, shows her, heavenly, a home.
Indifference remains unwed, yet breaks
Open in the absolute reflection.
Sky from home (2).
(To be clear, the witch does not advocate cooking kittens. She means cats, metaphorically.)
Stirring the cauldron. // Today is the last day of the waning crescent and it seems I am borrowing her shape, words keep surfacing these last few days that just aren’t ripe enough to make fruit. So instead of putting out, I add them back into the whorl of thoughts, wondering, (about unruly kittens), if they can break down and remix into a shape more suitable for survival.
The Darwinist, with his recommendation of adapting, not for the present, but for the future, thereby advises that she who wishes to survive, become versatile. (“And do the right thing, as quietly as possible.”) We work on this project. What is more versatile, human life or the written word? What will prove itself thus? What words could survive us? Questions for history and technology.
Of course, the first (woman’s) question was (and always has been) what, if anything, is worth anything at all? What of this life is worth living, whether I am (always) anger or (possibly) grace, and whatever could it be that I am trying to save from the burning city. Because it isn’t my visible self, in the sense contained in these dying words. The heart of someone I have never reached, whose emanation I am sensing with every cell, for whom I attempt transparency, self-finding through self-erasure.
(Perhaps, one works to save fire.)
Tomorrow is dark moon, rest day. So the work of today is preparing for sleep, negating the slim shape, and mothering oneself with a soothing song. That there is nothing more versatile than the churning depth of a dream.
Spider practice. // Not just the weaving of her web, a trap and a home and a cosmos and a sort of destiny. But also, the way it (daily) breaks, and how she does it again, and again, and again. This is her work and her expression. Loss, and the spirit of starting over from (seeming) nothing. Discovering new anchors, and then, half-measuring, half-making relationships between them. Living on strands of silk is not dissimilar to living on hypothesis. (Her spider soul suspended somewhere between dia-noia and noesis.)
Wijaya kusuma (2).
That was a little witchy, wasn’t it.
But cats are only ever half-tame and you’re never sure which half is in play, which one aflame. Familiar look, at any moment liable to anger (or just disappear). Stranger-purpose, brought intimate. Cuddly soft, leisurely cruel. Wild cherished messenger. Children to be kissed, cradled, and obeyed.
I guess I live now in a world of rain. Always about to rain, and sometimes does, and if I wash dishes, my face beads with moisture, from me or from the damp air, pores open, passable, sensitive, vulnurable, and everything must be said in a whisper, as at a funeral. Borderless, spherical. Thoughts too cutting for snails and frogs, who would breathe them in like blades, must be shared without syllables. With touch, immediate, tears tasted by skin, and that this world could dissolve in compassion.
From one perspective, by falling back asleep this morning, after feeding the cats, I wasted half the day; but from another, death is what we see when awake, and why would I waste a perfectly good Sunday morning like that; then again, I take from this fragment (21) that Heraclitus didn’t have cats.
Wijaya kusuma (1).
It started with the ants. The ants are being pesky today, (small beady black ones), doing this thing they sometimes do when it rains: they come out of the ground, running in circles with nowhere to go, so they find (my) food more quickly than usual. Then a pink and purple salad with inky black elements (no, not the ants!) next to pumpkin electrifies the day. Something I love is the always-everywhere freshness of vegetables, here. Still full of midnight air. Strings of raw, grated cabbage and beet are juicy and sweet-bitter, like the best Saturday ever, (or, as Sappho says, like love). I immediately want to share, with E., who is in Java today. So I add it to a list of things that need sharing. The list will solve problems of place, and time. Whereas love solves the problem of
Easy gloom, gentle periods of rain, and barely a transition from sleep. Or at all. Water, earth, air, at an even temperature. The wet doesn’t dry, the dry doesn’t wash away. Coffee blends into a universal container, as the dream becomes lucid, and atmosphere moderates a few simple questions.
A funny thing is when a meow turns into a yawn.
As I was a girl in school, and a lover of astronomy, I did a library research project on black holes, and the method of their making. Supernova. A “would be” thing. What a momentous spectacle (it “would be”)! To witness what (would already have) precluded (what I am). A celebrated freedom of imagination, or. Divine law, twisting, turning, and now. As monsters happen to be real, her bindings tremble. Her eyes won’t shut. (“Just don’t let me go,” she says to him. “When I beg you to let me go.”)
Learning to discern between hunger that’s sick and hunger that’s healthy. (Patho-logical and… logical? auto-logical? dia-logical?) In cat care, self-care, care in general. Observing, treating for, recovering from, parasites. (Overshoot, and the ana-logical.) Swallowing bitter herbs.
Unusual calm this morning, absence of demand. (Explained later by the fact, which I missed, I was sleeping, that somebody else took care of jobs that are usually mine.) A shadow of floating, displaced fear, and a choice, to let the intimacy of sensation remind me that we are (here, and not un)real.
A day spent adjusting between conflicted places and moods. Driving through Denpasar in Sweet Orange, windows down, concrete heat. Hair stuck to my cheeks, impossible to clear. Music from a younger country, (pie), dobro and whiskey, as the sun goes down and the city takes shape, interiors lit, full of smartphone advertisements, food stalls, diesel fumes, cartoon boba shops. A moment of lightness (under bright lights) in a foreign space. Dealing out as needed, the inside occupied by questions of boundaries and the effort it takes to let something go. Nothing quite settles until we get home, (it’s not home yet), wash feet, splash face, new toothpaste the scent of orange and cloves. Head on pillow. Ish, asleep. Lalah, playing, on top of the armoire. Waiting for E., and the closeness of warm skin, and for all of these things to slow to a stop.
Anger in writing becomes virulent. It never tires and lacks feeling for when to stop. Rage without responsibility does damage unmeasured, unintended, uncontrolled. You (we) know better than these written words. Friends, take care. Turning untempered anger into writing is making the material of war.
There’s something I have to write about but it’s giving me a hard time. It feels like this writhing thing inside of me that wants to get out, (you know, the usual feeling), but if I try to write about it, the words trail off, my fingers stop moving. It’s not that I’m scared of sharing this with you, (I love you but/and you’re really nobody, to me), I have a block just putting it down in written sentences. The words aren’t there to summarize.
Writing down is an alchemical treatment that some things resist. For different reasons, maybe, that I have yet to understand. The frustrating thing is, (why this of all things?), how simple it should be to put down. And at the same time, how alien the words will be from the experience, because the experience is (was) confusing and, well, terrifying in ways I maybe don’t want to share, or “externalize”, (it strikes me, what dubious complexity is hidden inside that word), or let go of.
Something precious (to me) that I don’t want to let go of.
(Working on it.)