Summer, Part 3

I am typing down these words. In the background, Jeff Buckley is singing, "kiss me, please kiss me," and I am wondering who he wrote the song for, and if he really did write it, and I am thinking, there is so much I am uncertain about, there is so much I don't know. There is no point to these words, to these thoughts, but I am hoping there will be. I resist the urge to stop. There is always the urge to. We wonder about the things we do, we wonder about the sense in them, or if there is any sense to the things we do. But we keep at it, we do not stop. At least, not when it matters--when it matters to us. Most of the time, the things that mean so much to us would not make sense to other people. I wonder about other people. I wonder about the things that mean something to them.

The song has ended, another one has begun. I wonder what sound will come out if the last one and "Lilac Wine" overlapped, at some point. If moments of our lives overlapped, what would it be like? Do moments ever overlap? What do the sciences say about time? It is a thought I do not wish to pursue. I can feel the sweat on my temples. "Why is everything so hazy?' Jeff Buckley sings. Outside, the sun is going mad with its own glory. How exaggerated the heat these days, have been. The word "exaggerated" was deliberately chosen, yes. Today is May 1st. It always rains on May 1st. Today, there is no rain, and the heat does not seem to have any plans of making way for rain. The heat always compels me to write. Sunlight such as this stirs up so much, but when I sit down to name them, I keep drawing blanks. There is nothing new in this.

"Oh, that was so real, oh, that was so real, oh, that was so real," Buckley sings. And then there is something about the moon and the wind. I go blank. I am wondering what to write next. Was it so real? This morning, I went through my stash of unfinished stories. I wonder if I would ever get to finish them. These things mean nothing to you, I know. But now, Jeff Buckley is singing, "Well, I heard there was a secret chord", and I pause to listen. Some songs command one to listen. Am I making sense to you?

Well it goes like this:
The fourth, the fifth, the minor fall and the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah


The song has ended. I have run out of things to say.

Interlude

Mo chuisle, you have come back.

Rest now, dear heart. Rain has laced the evening with crystal drops; look at how they shimmer in the moonlight. The night has shed away its mournfulness, and is once more fragrant with promise.

Do not keep this brightening at bay; let yourself be consumed by its radiance.

Tomorrow's sunlight waits. Love hovers at your fingertips.

Debris

Slanted stems of sunlight bathe the room in the aftermaths of a stowaway morning, and my eyes catch movement, elsewhere. Elsewheres are faraway places. A quick brush, an agitation of sorts, the noiseless rustle of absence. One more hand slices into the stillness and I realize it is the mirror, stirring: the mirror is the explanation, and my hand is in it. There doesn't always have to be a reason. I look, and my elbow materializes.

That is my wrist, and that is my hand. The sunlight lingers, waiting. My fingers are flipping through the pages of a slim volume; my fingers are looking for a memory. There is no face, and I move away, grateful. You will only find that which you really look for. The air hangs heavy with what comes next. And I'm sorry, but there are no more gaps I can put you in. 

Hand and book disappear, reappear, and I scoop them out of the mirror.

Somewhere, mute, small and distant, a misplaced hollowness. Here, the poem I was looking for.

Your Franz Ferdinand Shirt

And indeed, there will be time...

There will be time, there will be time.

- from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot

A girl and a boy once roamed the city under sun and starlight. Their portion of the years, once swallowed by the city, are now resurfacing into a single moment. Once upon a time, the girl and the boy drifted into parallels and disappeared into the years. But some sleight of hand, hosts of cogent thoughts, some vagrant wish, a strange, mute sadness--they will never know which, or that even all of these--have driven the years away and pulled, tilted them into a single point.

The girl and the boy are now talking about a shirt. The girl is telling the boy about her dream, because the shirt--and the boy--were in it. They are laughing, and in their laughter, their thoughts are careening backward into another time. The boy is remembering a Thursday, the girl, a Saturday. They were both in those days. As they talk, they are thinking of each other, and they are bending back into each other. Now, they are starting to grope around for the lost years, inching their way into them, picking up the luminous fragments and handling them in a circumspect way, avoiding the cracks on the floor, kicking the shards away. 

In this moment, they are not aware that the wounds have healed, or that they were ever there. They are not thinking about healed wounds; they are not thinking about wounds, at all. They are asking each other about the last movie they saw, about the books they have read. The boy is telling the girl about the book he finished two days ago; about how, upon shutting it, he had found himself wishing he were also shutting her memory forever, because the years have failed to do that. "But here I am," the girl says, and the boy replies, "no you're not here. You're there, I'm here. And I want to be there." The girl hesitates, then laughs, and the boy does, too. They are walking around the gaps.

They start talking about something else.

Notes and flowers

Living things don't all require 

light in the same degree. Some of us

make our own light:

- from "Lamium" by Louise Gluck

This poet's obsession with flowers has single-handedly strewn your mind with blooms. Never mind the uncertainty that lives there, or the sadness that comes for occasional visits. You can count on them not to mind.

The poet has a book filled with flowers. Roses, zinnias, irises, daisies, asters, buttercups, lilies. The pages whisper pinks and lavenders, burst into yellows and oranges, spew out reds and violets, echo blues and incidental blacks. They speak of living, and pain, and sorrow, and death, and hope. So much loveliness lining the hedges, colors brightening the pathways.

But you have zero interest in gardening. Once, you planted lavender Milflores (scientific name: Hydrangea Macrophylla, the internet says) in some grassy front yard from your past. They died, all four of them. Did they know you were going away?

photo from houseonahill.net

Your shopping list has only once included "flowers" (you can picture Mrs. Dalloway shaking her elegant head in disapproval) and the ones you bought were plastic. Tulips, they were, and white. Or were they purple? You wonder.

Are there even purple tulips?

You must remember to buy a vase, next time you go out. Write that down. Now.

You've been having dreams lately and, as you wonder about it now, you remember thinking about it some days ago, though which day it was, you don't remember. A line of words dances before your eyes: cease, seize, bees, sky, window. Another follows its tail: chair, smoke, bloom, tea, pavement.

The attempt to rationalize is quickly assaulted by the reprimand There is no pattern.

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.

Place, date and time, irrelevant

Yes, I violated the dress code and got away with it. So I'm staying in and taking it easy. Been stretched enough this week so I'm 'a loosen up real good. 

Tea for two, and the boy's been singing Ray Charles and trying his hand on the Beatles. I must be doing something right. Today, I saw someone texting while crossing a busy street. 

Bayo Whats Your Mix 30% nymph 30% elf 30% mermaid 10% human -- walang kokontra. But, oh, this schizo weather. How is it possible that I can't ever seem to get enough of you? Cryptic is what you are. 

The morning stretches out before me, like a giant yawn. Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, Natalie Merchant, Aimee Mann, Joni Mitchell. Spending QT with my girls. Slept the night away. For once. Glad to note the sun's toning it down a bit. Orange twilight, yesterday. 

12-year old girl, reading JD Salinger's Nine Stories. Am I making the right decisions? 

Finding comfort in numbness. I am currently obsessed with pens. Life's getting a little too fond of throwing me lemons. Waiting for the door to open! Pinks and paisleys, I love. 

Your coffee has grown cold. I need a Miles Davis/John Coltrane fix. Ah, what a noisy world this is. Been awake for 28 hours, and counting. You keep telling me to stop thinking too much. Know what? Maybe I should. I realize that to get out of this box, I ought to start digging. And I realize that to undo your sadness, I have to undo your childhood. 

I miss the coffee and the conversations. Was that thunder I heard? 

Right Here

the method to this madness the drifts the thrums pulsating the quiet in this music the solitude in this togetherness the reeling mind reeling from this tumult your childhood their childhood my childhood our childhoods one childhood locked this love of form and song and memory this love this love subterfuge and delusion the rhythms in one rhythm ecstasy in one moment misery in the next redemption in the symmetry symmetry in song the anguish of a breaking heart the broken heart conceding conceding at last clarity in this haze of smoke and melody the descant and the silence this silence tormentingly deceivingly eternal but the bliss in the music the music always the music