Friday, November 25, 2005

Yesterday was a perfect day. We drove a few hours to Wisconsin and on the way we saw a white bull by the side the road. Bella’s still swears it was a GIANT sheep. It felt magic. I wanted to pull the car over, open the window, feel it’s breath on my face.

In the afternoon we had dinner with my best friend. We have been friends forever. We are magic. After dinner we colored, played UNO with the girls and the four of us danced to eighty songs in the living room, then we went for a walk b/c it was cold and clear. Everything smelt like “before”. The way the sky gets ready for a big storm.

I drove home in the dark. I drove home to voices and this morning I woke up to six inches of snow, the girls in my bed. We made eggs and sang to Cassidy and now the girls are with their father and I have spent all afternoon under the down comforter with the book “Winter Birds,” two bananas and a cup of tea.

It is really sad and aching. The kind of book you can fall into and not find your way out of and I have read all of it. I feel guilty b/c I have read it the way I do, when I’m hungry for something, and this book which probably took him years to write is mine in an afternoon.

I wanted to write this all down b/c this is my day. Because I feel guilty for weird things, my friend being happy and married; she has her whole family to take care of her if she ever falls. The girls are gone and though I hunger for this space continually, I walk around like a blind man touching walls when they are not here.

Someone has given me money b/c they believe I can write books which made me excited a few days ago and now scares the shit out of me. What if more people give me money? What if they want more books? What if all I have is a long line of people believing in something that isn’t solid? I truly could be a woman who exists mainly on air.

If the children had not seen the white bull, I wonder today if I would know it was real? I am like that sometimes, that's why my teachers use to say, take her outside don’t let her read everything. My lines are cloudy, I fall into things too easily. I've been struggling since birth with the concept of the white bull.

4 comments:

LKD said...

Your comment, "I am a woman who exists mainly on air," reminded me instantly of this poem by Plath:

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it----

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
0 my enemy.
Do I terrify?----

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else,
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart----
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash ---
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there----

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

Thanks for bringing this poem into my head. I can do something with it. Having this poem in my head right along side the poem Rebecca (of Sunnybrook farm)(wink) posted on her blog (The Black Art by Sexton) feels like a gift. It's good to have these bars that are raised so damned impossibly high above my head. I like the sensation they give me of a woman, a girl, really, me, leaping and flailing and reaching.

I hope you write a poem about the white bull, T.

Probably sounds insane, but I'd kill for six inches of snow right now. (or 2 daughters who climbed into bed with me on cold November mornings)

You do know how good you have it, right? God, I hope you do.

Lyle Daggett said...

Somebody asked Orson Welles once how to audition for a role in a file or a play, what advice he would give about this. He sort of fumbled around for an answer for a minute, then he said, "Well, I guess you just have to walk on stage supremely confident, and not care one way or another if you get the part."

You'll be able to write the books. It's not just air. You're really a writer. Just forget everything and fly. You'll find you have wings, and they work.

(What are you going to name the pony? ...)

Lyle Daggett said...

Sorry for the typo, that should say "a *film* or a play". Those infernal typogremlins...

early hours of sky said...

Oddly I just had my cards read the other day and she said the same thing: you just know.

I am naming the pony "Celan" after Paul. What else would you name a pony?