associated in random thought

written on the body.

The moon is hungover tonight, slung low and slumping, propped up by generous blue clouds like a promised silver lining. She is bloodshot and tired; she has seen too many nights anymore. She’s here because she is always here; cyclical rhythms of women’s bellies and oceantides are what she was born to. She takes the constant, bright-shining light of the sun onto herself always, so that we have something to see by tonight.

We create our own contexts, write our perspectives into being, and here I am, scrounging, with arms reaching toward a heavenly body for hope that everything is where it is supposed to be. I just can’t tell anymore.

I’m back in Nashville now, have been here for two weeks, and the precarious balance of life has never been more palpable. Nor have I felt so frail and medicated. I am sincerely thankful that humans do not have a constant sense of that…existential frailty; if we did, we would all check ourselves into the nearest psychiatric hospital and stay awhile. Nurses would dole out meds and cigarettes, two by two, and we’d stay safely in a whitewashed room. We’d look for the lap of God in blank-white sheets of a single-sized bed. We would see grace as the sun shining through windows with blinds closed, impossible to open.

Oh, but the lockup is not life. And the safety of hospital rooms can’t keep the days out. There is always the date of release: welcome back to the world, frail one. You’re still here.

I watched the movie, garden state the other night. In it, a numb man tries to feel again, to actually live his life. He makes a real choice against the backdrop of a song called ‘let go’:

So let go jump in
Oh well what you waiting for
It's alright
'Cos there's beauty in the breakdown
So let go just get in
Oh it's so amazing here
It's alright
'Cos there's beauty in the breakdown

Before I came home tonight, after Kevin and his little man Josh took their leave of Charley and me at Café CoCo, I listened to the trio of bluegrass singers next to me, jamming on mandolin, banjo, and guitar. Somehow, I moved from audience to participant, and sang “Amazing Grace” as one of them, as the alto harmony, with Charley at my feet. They thanked me afterward, called me “Annie Get Your Gun” (harhar) and patted Charley on the head. A moment.

Posted by bananie at September 1, 2004 11:18 PM