My new bad hip tells me the world is melting / not that a harbinger was at all necessary // caved away with the radio,the dogs and cat / my pipe, a cup of coffee, and fading / into a mystery / the same old one / disappearing as I am / one mask at a time / into tobacco smoke / into ash / into used coffee grounds / until the world is passageable once again
I will lumber on in my own awkward fashion / a slightly mannered baboon //
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I think it’s entirely possible that I will never find my place in the world / and so left to write the ground under my feet / one step at a time.
2.11.26
///water dragons grow from uncaught catfish///
Left to my own devices I start to dive into my own linguistic: a mish mash of the words my granddaughter puts together and the various literatures that have / over the years / saved my life // crawling out I always try to remember / one must code switch / when floating to the surface / in the manner of a gianthead catfish / prehistoric / the stuff of cryptohistories
She looks out the window and spits out the word ‘melt,’ the worst curse she can think of against a layer of ice and snow that will not relent. In milder winters, it was that the mosquitoes didn’t die and the backyard mud carried in by the dogs. We have dug out of this mild inconvenience as best we can. I put my faith in her curses more than the snow plow that never touches our street. There are tales of an old International Harvester with a snow plow and an engine that does not die, but code enforcement actively silences these rumors. But waiting for spring is still considered a carnal act of rebellion.
The Monday after Winter Storm Fern. I have no interest in digging out or in finding my way into the world, except as a larger obligation and the realization that I will, at some point, have need. This is not to say I have turned my back on the world; rather, it picks up right where I leave it. That may be the most difficult lesson regarding time: when two friends part, the friendship begins to operate on a sort of half-life: the amount of time required for the friendship to metabolize itself in the absence of fresh interactions, whether in person or at a distance, depends entirely on the amount of toxins sticking to things. I have lost lives to my inability to understand the nature of half-life. Thus, I have learned that I must, at intervals, return to people and things I wish to nurture within myself.
I woke up this morning from dreams that left a trail like footprints disappearing in the snow. Hunkering down is good for my mind, but not necessarily for my body, since the body is meant to move. I will go out later and shovel off the porch and sidewalk, more out of the need to move than out of future necessity. In this instance, the two have a symbiotic relationship. As with all mechanical things, however, a certain amount of resistance must be overcome. I am thinking about the nature of steam and steam pumps. A steam pump operates because the resistance between steam pressure and water pressure is never equal. In order for a steam water pump to push water, the level of steam pressure must exceed the level of water pressure… the pounds per square inch that one pushes against the force of the other. There is a constant working for stasis, for balance, that, if the machinery operates correctly, is never really achieved. Because if the steam psi is balanced perfectly against liquid psi, the pump doesn’t move, energy is not produced, and work is not done. The machinery locks up.
Thus, it could be argued that it is only through resistance that we know we are alive.
These steam engine metaphors will not leave me. But maybe it’s only the broken heart that knows it’s alive.
