Epistle. To: Wollstonecraft

Hummingbird speed would be cool. As though you held different parts and those parts were different types of scales that entered in and out. And when you look at hummingbirds it's like why hold onto a branch? A refresher course in the finer arts of empty thinking. How would you paint a hummingbird I asked the nurse? A few scratchy lines like a blur? Are you using a solid ground or not she wanted to know? I didn't know and that threw me. So I asked do you think birds have any idea about breakfast? Oh birds completely understand about breakfast she said and laughed. Besides she said what can happen overnight? She had fine gray green eyes which made them easy to look into and then feel lost without regrets. The thing is you settle in for a time and then it changes. Much of the day these days is spent in idleness - taken from an old Chinese world view - a lazybones word for a spiritual posture - and from there one can only ask further questions. When the sunlight  is out I do a good imitation of the lizard king routine and sit in a plastic chair on the deck sipping a ginger ale for a thrill. Face up to the radiation and getting a dose to warm the blood in springtime after a long fucked up winter. Do you imagine falling asleep is medicine? And the lake is way high over normal stages. And I read that for every foot of lake water above flood level it takes twenty days for that extra foot of water to drain down and go away. Naturally I have water down in the basement which I cannot do anything about. The lake is like two feet higher than what it should be. And when I get out on that deck chair and have a couple of pain meds - to lose that sorrowful blueprint left post-surgical - and then nod off - like Marge does in the front seat of the land rover  in Who'll Stop the Rain as the agents and the husband she left close in - she left whatever it was she had behind - both for the Vietnam heroin she now loves and the anti-hero Ray who provides it - but whom she still wants is still the question - what is it that she wants? -  everything - she wants the dope the husband the lover - but then the agents close in - and I open my eyes suddenly and I'm like two feet higher too! The nurse said well don't expect so much. But I said if you can't believe in movies what then? The nurse had wavy auburn hair that shook down in curls around her shoulders and was like the color of a flower pot you might pick up at a tag sale for a song. But I said why not believe in the miraculous overnight? Why not forget about time as a marker? Because the nurse said you need to toughen up. And that is not magic. It's day after day she said. And when she said that something hit. It was Friday the 13th. I had an opening that night. A swank retail establishment where a painting was altogether another consumer good up for sale. And did I need a payday!  Life was filled with chances we never take anyway - hanging on thin air waiting for us to recognize - so I asked her. Would you like to come along? It seemed innocent enough- but hey nothing really is -  and I think she understood that. Maybe I just feared. Where does the love come from? Where does anything like help come from when you're no longer hurt and don't always spend the waking moments so to speak looking over your shoulder? Maybe I simply wanted to walk into an evening with someone else as a look or a combination. The nurse said I have my doubts. Yea it's funny that way I said.