Flashbacks > NYC / Cornwall-on-Hudson / Ann Arbor //
5/18/16
Subway. Young Russian couple seated, visiting, wrapped around each other. She holds his one big hand open loosely between her two hands in their combined lap. She’s talking and talking and his head’s looking down into his own palm and he moves his eyes up to her and continues to fall in love as she keeps talking.
5/26/16
Come now. We know where the eye goes.
Boy rolls soccer ball ahead the wide sidewalk to practice weaving, knowing I’ll follow the movement
6/5/16
the whistling of the wheels of the train on the tracks as it leaves one station for another plays a high hung-onto version of the first few notes of that song in west side story Maria reprises as Tony dies in her arms – (There’s) “a place for us” – her voice breaking and her weeping beginning after “place” so she cannot continue. Each time a train leaves it squeaks, “There’s / a / plaaaaaace—”
6/10/16
O to be an edifice and calm
6/15/16
Doesn’t nosy always mean at least a little lonely?
6/25/16
Moravian tile works
Bear Mountain
And since the pool place was closed, the water’s gonna be what the water is through the weekend.
It doesn’t look like it has much in it [the drain] because I don’t want it to have much in there. So I don’t have to do this. [Raises pool cleaner from pool, dumps]
11/9/16
I don’t understand why the sun is out.
11/20/16
“So the two junkies are suing the dead woman.”
—Law student housemate on a case where an elderly woman hit two guys high on heroin with her car late at night and died a few weeks later
(we look at each other; crack up)
11/23/16
She doesn’t get it and to me there’s nothing to get
You smell like yourself
11/25/16
The reader never knows.
—RM re: work put into any one poem
1/3/17
The lumps of baleen at the bases of palms
1/15/17
I should not be hungry—remember that time that I ate?
1/17/17
I will remember Michigan for its lurid post-rain lichen
1/23/17
I think I figured out a key to why I’m afraid of becoming intimate with [____]. When people are attracted to me I assume it’s because I have tricked them by being funny, pretty, something. But [____] I think actually truly pities me, and does not judge me, and I have a lot of trouble with that. I do not know how to (want to) pity myself. Am I afraid to love what would pity me? Are desire and pity opposed? Am I physically repulsed by pity?
Dream Yesterday
I survive a deadly crash on the Golden Gate Bridge and come to hours later. A cleanup crew is removing debris, etc. under a gray sky, and some traffic is being let through now. I’m on my back on the roof or side of an emergency exit of a bus, on its side, elevated.
I make a noise. A man with a broom or something glances up at me, realizes I’m alive. Call for help, I say, with effort. I’m injured.
Not likely, he replies; still working. Other workers out of earshot move around slowly and peripherally. You look like a corpse. He means from the rescue helicopters I wouldn’t have looked worth saving. Maybe if there were ten or three or you they’d make another trip, he said. But not just one.
I lay there feeling my cracked ribs, head ringing. Your best bet is to walk the few miles into the city, he continued, get yourself treatment. Nobody’s coming back out here. And we got our work cut out for us.
9:42AM
DISSOCIATION
Once you’ve done the rant then I feel I need, check 1-10 how you feel about the situation or issue. If you’re not at zero, go again. be sure to ask your mind, is there anything else about this situation that I’m feeling or that I need? Then be very quiet and see what comes up, and add that to your lists, and see again. be sure you’re mobilizing your vocal cords throughout or your brain will not get the connective signal.
Send breath up the spine and down the front. It helps to focus on colors if you’re getting any colors here.
Before leaving your room and going downstairs, ground, and use waterfall of light. Throughout the day, a thousand times, alone or among others, ground.
Remember: Lying to yourself is as bad as lying to others.