leaking cup

and cracks between worlds

There is a leak in these cups. For three mornings in a row now, my coffee is gone before I am anywhere near ready to begin anything. And the compass must have fallen into a crevice––or crevasse, somewhere in the storm of this mess. I like the dreaming better when I am not pulled from it so soon, and when I can see the distinctions between to and from. Writing that sentence sounds like an admission of having lost essential bearings, of not knowing whether this is coming or going, which is more than I meant to unpack so early. 

I rehearse the choreography of resolve: I will sort this out. Here, like this. This is a bed. This is a room. The alarm, Monday. The empty cup where the coffee should still be. In the kitchen, the knife beside the bread until the moment comes to cut, to feed. And I balk before reading the news again, not ready yet for the next installment of who is eating whom; it seems that we have yet to admit something to ourselves, about our tastes.

In the last dream, there were a number of us in need of carrying, away from some alarm. I was among these, but in the last scene a carrier, taking whomever I could fit in my arms. The carried were weakened, ill, and although larger than me in normal times, presented themselves small enough to fit under an arm.

Here we are, the I of my dream was saying to these, here we are and checking as I hurried, are you okay, saying as I hurried, here we are and we are almost. Saying, we are almost here. And now, time to go to some other where, more familiar in setting and somehow much less clear.

perennial questions

in muddy waters

Everybody always asks me these questions, the writer was saying. Hah, like I know! For me, it’s all about the desperate questions, you know? Like, what’s the matter?

But then, he said, everything is like that, my whole life––you gotta stay close to hell, and also to joy. And somehow manage not to melt. Maybe that’s what it is for me, why I also stay so close to water. People are always asking me about the water, he said. I guess it’s the eternal quality about it, and that savage beauty, where everything is eating each other.

We were eating beer and catfish at a party in his honor. Someone asked him how he kept things fresh. He laughed and said, people don’t know how interesting they are! Then he invoked Beckett, who said nothing was funnier than unhappiness.

At this point, we were interrupted by a mutual friend, younger. How’s the work now? The friend was asking and the writer made a face. It’s going, he said, but who knows where?