against the law, i threw love out the window
or i surrendered to circumstances; i’m making an excuse (and being led to debunking it—but the drama is slow, is build in years, costs remembering
to keep things open, breathing, porous, receptive; to say Yes to life, to keep believing (i am typing near-death)
“And these nights were being acted out under a foreign sky, with no one to watch, no penalties attached — it was this last fact which was our undoing for nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom. I suppose this was why I asked her to marry me: to give myself something to be moored to. Perhaps this was why, in Spain, she decided that she wanted to marry me. But people can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room
another email subscription to turn off, to tune back into silence and blankness, ordinary breath and sight: I say Trust the world, Trust life, forget me ~ maybe this is the liberation, the victory, the “finished work”—no more work to do
I can’t leave my house
Or answer the phone
I’m going down again
But I’m not alone
Settling at last
Accounts of the soul
This for the trash
That paid in full
As for the fall, it
Began long ago
Can’t stop the rain
Can’t stop the snow
I sit in my chair
I look at the street
The neighbor returns
My smile of defeat
I move with the leaves
I shine with the chrome
I’m almost alive
I’m almost at home
No one to follow
And nothing to teach
Except that the goal
Falls short of the reach
endless road to rediscover
writing like i’m dead! Is it just October
Leonard Cohen in this record had carte blanche to say everything he wanted—dying means you can; nothing’s stopping you, don’t hold back, spend it all right now, tap into abundance
“Use your best material now. Just squander yourself. Enjoy it.”
becoming practical about love: calibrating what part of my shadow i put out here on the impersonal~then~personal internet…the weird wobbly place of Maybe
i can say this better at some point: who we write to when we write online; who we hope shows up—writing to the perfect listener; writing to make them appear; writing and art as reaching out of unbearable silent solitude to Real Life (we have dim memories)
i also wonder why i got so far away, and if i did—can’t interrogate my mind and personality on my own! Woohoo! So I’m formed as a key ~ playing this video game of my livelihood and philosophy, playing until it’s boring (it’s unprofitable but I keep believing enough living-making will come)
there are other lacks to point to
