we are such stuff as dreams are made on

So.

It’s late and dark and cold. The Dads are telling us not to let The Dogs out to pee because there are coyotes roaming the hillside. If they venture into this dry, Valley night, they will surely be eaten and torn apart by members of their own canine family like ecstatic maenads in a Dionysian festival.

So.

The fire that we made has burned down to embers, which are hotter and redder than the yellow flames that lasted as long as the logs would allow, yet the color that burns the hottest, ironically, is blue. I sit on the mantelpiece with my legs curled up under me, wishing that I had a manuscript, and a glass of Pinot Noir, and maybe a Muse, just for kicks. I could really use some inspiration. I clap and clap until my hands are smarting with pain, but all I have managed to revive is the Absinthe Faerey. Tinkerbell? Is that you? What have you become?

So.

My lady lays in faded sheets. She is jinxed, wild and sparkling like the night. She walks in beauty. She will not be tamed. She.

She tells me that she loves me but does not believe me when I repeat those words. But how can four little letters convey the Great Abstraction. Our brains evolved to process emotions thousands of years before the acquisition of language came on the hominid scene. No wonder that words so often fail. Have you ever tried to explain how an orgasm feels to someone who’s never had one? It’s impossible. Pleasure, pain, heartbreak, grief…these feelings to which we affix black and white words are much deeper and older than our ability to name them. “What can be shown cannot be said.”

I get this. It makes sense. So I touch her instead, press my body against her warmth. She understands my love now because I’ve made it tangible. She feels it with a knowing that is ancient and female and divine.

So.

I sip and consider. I think about the social responsibility bestowed upon writers. Like, this just happened. Make it matter. “Make it new.” as Pound said. Make it puncture, make it steel, make it sound. Make it fusion, make it freezing, make it fly.

And so it is. I needed to write tonight because, well, I realized that if you spill beer on a keyboard it’s permanent. Something as silly as that. So. How could I spend my life being impermanent, soluble, and not say anything, given that everything could be erased in some drunk, erratic second.

There’s actually a shot called “Mind-Eraser.” I’ve had it. It’s nasty. Kahlua, vodka, and Sprite. Kind of like smog and charcoal and cherry blossoms mixed together. Kind of like exploding.

So.

Cyperspace is just an extension, a further dimension of human consciousness anyway. I want my thoughts to be held here is this electromagnetic fabric, safe from the pyres of book burnings and witch hunts that seek to destroy that which is beautiful in its defiance.

There is this post-modern disillusionment with linear Time. It seems that history as we know it, is coming to an end. Some say it’s long overdue. I say we have always lived cyclically, vertically inclined. Given that time is not a constant, but rather a fourth dimension, I have been fascinated with the folds, the fabric, as Nabokov has said, “the chance creases in the texture of Time.” Yet our contemporary American Dream goes chugging along as always. Always trying to be Top Dog. Until you get eaten by coyotes, that is. The scariest thing, I imagine, would be to get destroyed by a very close relative. I read about this in the paper. It really does happen, and it’s sick. Unfortunately humans are not immune to this behavior. Altruism does thrive, but it is painted on walls. In caves. We who can see are inherently blinded by sheer consequence. And temporality. But Space, the Comedy Villain, still lurks in the background, ready to disrupt its flow once again.

So,

To all the people, like me, who wished they were someone else, only to find out that the person they so ardently aspired to be was fictional….this is for you.

So.

When it all comes down to molecules and atoms, what will be left? Neils Bohr gave us energy levels in which to operate, but Heisenberg gave us the uncertainty to move elsewhere. To be chaotic. To be, in essence, free to do the unexpected. John Calvin would not have approved. Things are no longer the dualistic, confining either/or, but have now become both/and. Archtypes. Complementarity. Relativity. It’s thrilling.

So.

Where is this great migration? This diaspora. Tony Kushner says, “The world only spins forward.” Where do we go when all the earth in this Earth has already been uncovered? Who do we turn to but ourselves, our friends, our fellow humans, as the next great enigma to explore? When we run out of territory, I think it's only natural that our physical bodies become the Last Frontier.

“I believe in such cartography—to be marked by nature, not to just label ourselves on a map. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience.”
–Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

And how will we treat our fellow man. Like captives? Children? (as if we could say we are wiser than children) Natives? Savages? Just look at the carnage committed by one “civilized” nation towards another. Makes me want to till soil and worship the Great Goddess. Put my ear to the ground and truly listen.

Let us look not to the world that seeks to destroy us, but rather find the shred of goodness in each other that encourages us to endure.

“Death usually has to take life away. I don't know if that's just the animal. I don't know if it's not braver to die, but I recognize the habit; the addiction to being alive. So we live past hope. If I can find hope anywhere, that's it, that's the best I can do. It's so much not enough. It's so inadequate. But still bless me anyway. I want more life.”
-Tony Kushner, Angels in America


And so it is.

-katie

when there is october love

[when there is october love]

dedicated to Diane and Ken Boyden on their 27^th Wedding Anniversary, October 4, 2007.

when there is October love—

(fall—ing

leaves

floating

d

o

w n)

crystal lake golden gate—brisk—beigepinkbrown;

dusky—dreamy, static—steamy,

a manandwoman speaking vows.

hope by heart, grief by joy

then in now, girl in boy

in time(less)ness we here not never

one become be alwaysforever.

tideful turning earthy sound,

lashes, lips

bound by crowns.

moonlicious crispy slated skies

winekiss (tastethis) laughsand sighs.

three for luck, two little girls,

leaves to years to eyes unfurls.

they get their needs to give their haves,

move their dreams, sing their glads.

hewithshe by longago lake,

seeds sown—upgrow(n)

in(their)love make

she some smallish days

she some smallish days my

ears prick tears—bathe us, taste us

as smiles dissolve into night.

the moonlicked lusty november

sky: felt it like velvet

beneath

her

and

i