Epistle. To: Wollstonecraft

Ah finally a springtime afternoon to have. Radical sunlight and a fine breeze. Easy walking weather and so that's it, up one street and down another, like not actually caring about anything or I imagine what it might be like being timeless if that were something we might ever know. People around tend to their small gardens as in a fever, fussing over designs for stone footsteps and arrangements of new bought flowers, you might think it all was a manner like in a grand English landscape and not a precious bit of earth turned over at the end of a lawn on Catherine Street. Moving slow like some clumsy monster on the loose and having first steps. If this ever was just a taste of life then give me more. But can you appreciate anywhere present unless you've been someplace else in the past? What is that accord that has us to remember? When I contrast - this walking about - with being held in a hospital room just last week- the experience seems to travel from one to the other and back around as though these moments were partners in bed together and pain and pleasure were united for all the influence. Like waking up in the recovery room and suddenly playing over what the knock-out doc said about the anesthesia he would administer - we're going to put you to sleep etc. - but no that was a medical sleight of hand - and I told him so -  no what you're going to do is place me inside a chemically induced coma so let's just do it like that. Alas nobody listens! To digress is to live in the first place! And woke up - really the stuff is fantastic for taking a load off your head - and was attached to so much hardware it was difficult to find either place or time in the most basic decent sense.  EKG machine - blood pressure cuff - oxygen lines in the nose - oxygen meter taped to left index finger - a pair of tubes wrapped around my legs that on rhythm every few minutes would inflate and squeeze my legs   for blood flow like hands belonging to some fiend - even still had the surgical cap on - everybody looks terrible in those anyway - and what was like a ton of blankets smothering the instinct to be up and away - And of course the IV where streams of synthetic dope ran down from the headwaters of a computer terminal and gathered in my blood and like clockwork once a button was pushed washed me away time and again. I tried to imagine I was in a crime movie. And soon other members of the gang would burst into the hospital, overpower my captors, and spring me out to the door to a waiting ambulance that had been stolen for the occasion. Sometimes it all seems so literal. That you are trapped in a space until something better comes along. Ah. This walking about. A pretty foolproof system. Clouds building from the north. Cleaning the garage on Howard. Demolition of a garage on Hayward. A woman weeding her flower bed with tools scattered on the sidewalk, and a red wheelbarrow - so much depends on it - in the way. Certain obstacles for me in the slow bound lane. Kinds of expressions or even a joy for her. It's the differences which unite us. She looked up at my sunglasses and ski pole tapping the sidewalk and said oh I'm sorry I didn't realize you couldn't see. That's how it goes. The misunderstood. The beautiful. I'll just step around this stuff I said. There was a small musical device she was listening to in the tulips. And a dog who looked up at me and I swear he winked.

Epistle. To Bernadette Wild Garden

All day long these big big winds slammed against whatever was in the way. That may sound stupid but there has to be resistance. And sustained like that. Looking across the lake was like staring into a continual white out from the park over to NY state. Amazing the trees don't break off. An old question: how can something you can't see become so dominant? Relentless as a thought out of control. Apple blossoms fly through the streets and cover parked cars like a snowfall. Blue recycling bins roll in numbers like tumbleweeds in a ghost town. Another old thought: there's trouble here. Even put in some temporary stakes for the tomato plants for the day so they'd wouldn't blow up over and away. Thin bamboo pieces with twist ties.  I'd put the real stakes in the ground but but I couldn't hammer them far enough without maybe like blowing out my stitches on the inside. Talk about a mess! And consequences! Thought about it. But then had a picture in my head what it would be like and so was voted down. Democracy of the body in action. Wound over mind. And maybe it was settling for less just to plant a row of beans and a row of beets? Not really. Though did almost lose the seeds to the wind when I opened the package! Each time I bend over to do something it's as though I've taken something into account and then have to sign a registry. And each time that happens there's a little dance step-like motion, a more refined position in recoil that says hello don't do this. Ah - it's like the nurse said - your body does not want to lie to you. It's the expectations that get us and in the end make us fools. But if it wasn't going to rain then fuck it. There was a time to get something in the ground and this was it. Alas - as ever - I do seem incapable to learn even the simplest points of the day. The tiny motions that go with dropping a line of seeds into the dirt can bring about a kind of anatomical dope slap that when all's said and done you have no control over. If you're going to play with fire as they say there will be disquiet and pain afterwards unless you're agile enough to get out of the way.  But does that makes us tragic? Romantic even? Or as I implied just plain stupid? Probably speaking I settle for a taste from all three. Yea I know. Be like the trees. Bend but don't break and all that. But I'm not a tree. I'm a relatively  average circumstance processing mammal with a geared up nervous system. And I'm not sure about any of it. But you can't blame me if everything happens at once.

Epistle. To: Lady Kimono Clan

It's like a base urban legend - yea I know you all live at the foot of a mountain and conduct operations from there - and it does matter where you live and what you make - yea I know you love the  country and the trees with blossoms and the old roads that have been there since time became a blink - but those landscape paintings you sent - I felt kind of wonderfully lost looking at them. Maybe I was even there  where they came from and was tucked inside them somehow like being at a movie and alone in the dark but still with a feeling all encompassed. But you can't make something from nothing. There's no mystery in creation. Even if the gods are going to pat us on the back, isn't that because the gods recognize we all already belong to a long line of thieves and characters whose cash words have always been well let's bend the truth a little. The good trick is finding it. Accidents - there are materials at hand - we enjoy getting our hands dirty - a sideways glance at the marvelous even - and even though living remains as burdensome as ever it remains deep and satisfying to poke around outdoors - all the stuff we need is right there without us. And that should be like a telling point in the mystery. Everybody else lives so far away. And it's not like they are required at the moment or anything like that. But they just live far away.      

Epistle. To: Berlin Film Actress

Yea of course the rapture didn't happen either. And after all that advertising.  How do you face down the end of the world anyway? Despite the advance publicity - and ahem a world wide following of millions  - yet here we are as the world keeps right on going. Did you ever think that maybe god is laughing? Or even the text we're presented with is nothing but laughter? It was a bad enough movie back in the day. Maybe Mimi Rogers was just trying to get over the break up with Tom Cruise? Forget that business with the white horse with wings as the jail breaks down... I'm glad to call in and say that the tulips are fine and am having a meal with fresh asparagus from my neighbor's backyard garden. There's nothing to do about it. Wouldn't heaven just confuse you anyway? Why believe in hell other than a sick bedtime story to scare the pants off you and so you developed a fondness for horror movies later on? And as ever - tempting the fateful strings of this life - I scratched around in the garden yesterday. Took a pain med and fuck it let's see what happened later. A lovely hot spring afternoon. Slowly, back and forth, a zen-like rake though by no means was this an attempt to establish credentials. What I really wanted to happen was to go deeper. With a shovel. Turn upside down what was the low dirt in the vegetable box and move it up closer into the air. But it didn't happen that way. For obvious reasons. I keep reminding myself.  Even though I dislike having a self to be reminded about, it's still fun to do it! And pushing the surface back and forth was work plenty. It's still the wound and all that. I try and do stuff before a calamity sets in. An experience really. A fall back moment where engagement stops and a little wire in the brain sends out a warning signal that begins to echo oh-oh in the ears. This is like being reminded what a fool it is to have a body. And speaking honestly - well maybe just this side of a lie - wouldn't want to fall into a habit one way or the other - but having a thought about the evening was enough to have me stop. Pain in the future is a big enough suck anyway. If this were a spy thriller there would be coded language to decipher and it would read abort mission. Not that I'll ever get the girl in this script but hey! But hey - despite fear of the future - and the future does not exist but it is here anyway like a twister puzzle in the back pages of a comic - what was happening was so entirely pleasant. The sunlight - the dirt - the pain med - someone across the street was strumming a guitar - figuring out for later which plant goes where and so on - was like being swept into a lost afternoon - was like having shangri-la tossed at your feet - well maybe for only an hour or so just this side of honestly. That's the problem and the beauty. Even though living was as burdensome as ever it was I can say it was deeply satisfying to be poking around outdoors. A sideways glance at the marvelous even.    

Epistle. To Bernadette Wild Garden

Cool damp morning where the trees look heavy from all the rain. Are we in that place once again? Where it's another time, another time between storms where the norm becomes looking elsewhere? Trimmed the roses yesterday in a rare moment of sunlight. They way they looked they needed to have all that dead material lost, the brown canes sucking energy and not giving anything in return. And not much in the way of rebellion from the wound. Perhaps I should name it and give it a personality? But on second thought I don't think so. And it's odd, not to hear anything electronic not mechanized. No cars on the street and no planes in the sky or any land lines exploding in open windows. Only the birds calling back and forth like sounds in the woods. No human voices either. It's like a science fiction quiet, where at first you don't realize what's happening. But then as the quiet settles in.  And you find everything else on the human side has gone and you're alone, in what a script maker has decided this sounds like the end of the world with just you listening. And on cue a fog settles in among the trees. Then to disprove theory a truck rattles over on Caroline Street. Ah, too much introspection brings back the rain! Soon there will be a mad rush as ten thousand soccer parents look for parking in the neighborhood like a bunch of mantis in SUV's. Today is supposed to be part cloudy. Tomorrow is supposed to be part sunny. Where's the line? Should you plan on something if it's going to be a part sunny day? And should you just give it up and forget about it on what should be it's opposite the part cloudy day? And I had this coupon. It was worth some much off per gallon of gas and up to twenty gallons. Having things like that can spur you to action. But no one explained I had to pay inside the store. I swiped a card like everybody else and paid outside. There's nothing I can do a woman said. I told her no one told me I had to pay inside. She looked at me like a zombie and began eating a sandwich from a plastic bag hot out of the microwave while she was selling lottery tickets and a bottles of Sprite to other customers pushing me aside. And it sounded so feeble - and  this was it - no one told me I had to pay inside. Now I have a full tank in the truck and an unused unfulfilled coupon due to expire next week. And since I'm not driving a lot these days there is no way this side of Hades-town I will go through that full tank in time. In time to get back that due from the coupon. But maybe I should get enterprising. Maybe try and sell that coupon at like half price to a soccer parent. If you need to park so far away from the field and go bitch and balls about it - like half a block! - then whoa I can make this trip partially worth you're while! But I never do those things. Maybe there's an authority to petition. Hey fuck this I've been sandbagged! But I imagine you should be smart in situations like these. And as ever it's situations like these that leave me baffled until they are explained more better in full. Maybe it was just a bad day for coupons. Maybe I'll drive around all day and drink up that gasoline. Then start over and go to a different store and truly be able to use that coupon because now I know you need to pay on the inside. Thunder up in the heavens. Banging across the forecast. For sure I'm going to plan on nothing.