Post-Birthday post-it:

I've just had a very long, eventful weekend. And though it seems that the proper thing to do right now is to write about it, all I feel like doing is collapsing into bed. The grind starts again tonight, after all, so I'm going to do just that: collapse.

Good night.

P.S. Mercury's turned direct yesterday, by the way. I am looking forward to some semblance of order around here.

*crossing fingers*

Found:

“I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.” 
--Joan Didion, Slouching Toward Bethlehem

Weather report

The clock said 12:52 when I glanced up at it from the plate of greens I was picking on. A peek out the window yielded a sight of bluish/purplish clouds and a grey-tinted sky.

Non-movement. Muteness.

The beads of sweat forming on my arms, for some reason, ended whatever suspicions of rain/non-rain I had had this morning when I went outside and felt the sting of the sun against my skin. It looks like rain, I remembered thinking, as I looked up and saw the sky ablaze with sunlight.

Meanwhile, and more so because of the inclement state of the sky, I felt that sensation of being suspended nowhere and everywhere. The possibility of renewal lay somewhere, but I insisted on abeyance.

Quagmires lie where there is flux, and we've all been through enough storms to want another mishap, another fall.

But here comes a drizzle, and I find myself begrudgingly wishing the winds of a week ago back, the memory of a just-risen, benevolent sun--eavesdropping on a conversation about moonbeams and pathways and dreams--ambling into my mind like a cool, confiding breeze.

Sunlight slanting over surfaces is a breathtakingly beautiful thing. Like sadness, sometimes. Or, certainty.

Throw in particles of dust (star, or fairy), let them glimmer for a little while, and the mind's eye settles.

Exquisiteness is in the seer's point of view.

Admonition

Knowing all that you do, now, you should no longer be surprised. It isn't pain that hardens us, but the decision that comes after. 

The child that you once were, now looks at you with helpless eyes; the woman looks back, wistful. But in between, a valley of years: murky with the mire of tears, cloaking clocks of time, and underneath, a shroud of stories told and untold, the width between the torment and, always, the letting go. 

It should be no wonder that you walk away.

It shouldn't be.

Go.

And because I insist on images, I draw blanks. One after another, empty and unperturbed.

I wonder about the soul in things, turning them inside my head, as I stack stray sheets of hollowness on top of a desk. Loss is hackneyed, its heart a dead river. But we persist in making tangible, demanding preciseness out of space. Drawing blanks, along the way, from dug-up graves, from forgotten gaps.

"I am deliberate and afraid of nothing."

-Audre Lorde

Today, I take a pause, to celebrate the women I know, have known, and will know, who have suffered, risen, and moved forward, once more. I salute your greatness and enshrine your legacies.

Diving into this wreck (an exercise on randomness),

these are what I came up with:

A list of things to do, two items in all. A bunch of keys, minus one key. A view from a window, moonlit and square. Left-over sadness in a yellow mug. 

A thin volume of poetry, dog-eared where the months have settled. Some random dream of forgetting, wafting in some fugitive breeze. 

A movie ticket, a concert ticket, four recital programs, three laundry receipts. 

Strings, an unlabeled bottle, forgiveness. Irony. A lotus flower, lilac and plastic. A smooth, round paperweight, squinting under the lamplight. 

A torn piece of laughter. Dust. A pill. 

An empty notebook. Shyness, folded beneath folded years. A pinwheel. 

Four pencils, sharpened and useless. A memory of trees, the comfort in shadows. 

A lone moth. A strand of sunsets. Blue post-its. An unfinished letter. A question. 

Nine questions. No answer. No answers.

A moment, a pause.

It is inevitable that they come along; first, one, and then, the other. Along with trailing noises--a puppy's bark, some jazz--and the daily sight of things, walls, maybe, or a folded shirt, an empty glass; some invisible door opens, and the moment tiptoes in, with the pause, in tow.

The moment stretches into something almost palpable, and so does the pause. One is made to acknowledge both, and the hours that came before. How long has it been? The question begs to be asked. How long since the once constant companions--endless wakefulness, maybe, or periodic stupors, insuppressible tears--have left? The days have been kind, one realizes. They have brought one to the present, where the certainty of pain, the sting of anguished thoughts, and the seeming permanence of grief for lost things, are but memories, that consign themselves deeper into some indeterminate recess of the healing heart. 

Some dull ache taps one on the arm. But the day waits outside and has, in truth, begun pulling one out of the hour. The interlude ends, and one stirs back into one's locus, where breakfast waits, and shelves need dusting.

Somewhere, the sudden loudness of a door shutting, the footsteps of someone walking away. Somewhere, the sound of someone leaving. 

But here, the sunlight streams in. And for a moment, the handle of the coffee cup sparkles where the light slants, like newness.