birthday

It was a day of driving and coffee that tasted vaguely of soap and students that vaguely seemed to be wondering if they were getting their money worth and a swimming pool where the janitor threw out my leopard print bathing-suit and lines and throughways and no calls and sighs

and Dini next door gave me champagne raspberries and chardonnay and a new friend woke even before me and made my computer play a song and a man listened and the sun beat down and the phone rang and I put on my pink dress and aimee and I drank a bubbly key lime drink and ate gnocchi

dream

that Anne calls me stuck in traffic. She hates California. We joke that maybe the cars will move slow enough that she can do yoga. She has a revelation that she wants to move to Japan. When I ask why she says because Japan is ready; we are not ready. I tell her I concur, that I flew over Tokyo once, looked down and thought: "ready." I ask for examples and she says that she's taking a course and they assigned "The Norton Anthology of the Best Historical Essays...they would never do that in Japan." I worry because I have assigned anthologies in my writing courses. I ask what her plans are and she says if she ever gets out of traffic she has to meet people to do something she can't talk about. I protest and she says well you should know you asked everyone to get you that necklace for your birthday. Then my stepfather is in a kitchen holding it up, a ridiculous $2000 saphire necklace I wanted everyone in my life to contribute to. He proceeds to wash the dishes.

turns out

it's not so bad being a grown-up, provided you can be a slightly eccentric one.

lock

At Aimee's in the woods--dream number 97 about my book. It is published by some makeshift press and they send me proofs that include five pages of black and white photos in the front, of readings, events in new york. Including one Madonna/ Britney like image of me kissing Kristin Prevallet. Yesterday a voice opened a room, a whole world, brought back strange longing. Another unanswered call stripped a layer off me. Maybe it really is better to keep a lock on the past.

Do not be mean, I am ready for enormity

From the Restored Edition:

The soul is a bride
In a still place, and the groom is red and forgetful, he is featureless."

from "Berck-Plage'



I know why you will not give it to me,
You are terrified

The world will go up in a shriek, and your head with it,
Bossed, brazen, an antique shield,

A marvel to your great-grandchildren.
Do not be afraid, it is not so.

I will only take it and go aside quietly...

from "A Birthday Present"



The pain
You wake to is not yours.

Love, love,
I have hung our cave with roses,
With soft rugs---

The last of Victoriana
Let the stars
Plummet to their dark address,

Let the mercuric
Atoms that cripple drip
Into the terrible well,

You are the one
Solid the spaces lean on, envious.
You are the baby in the barn.

from "Nick and the Candlestick"

Proust

"And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) which we do not suspect. And as for that object, it depends on chance whether we come upon it or not before we ourselves must die."

tonight

in a city that is underwater a woman told me I was lucky.
that I could have what I wanted. she had blood on her teeth and the police force resigned when things looked grim.
the sounds of cicadas and trains are good sounds.
luck has nothing to do with money.
keep it in your pocket.
the lillies are blooming.
stay if you need to stay, or leave and take what you need.
sleep in a stadium, on an island, a mountain, a lotus, a cloud,
your body is your own.

the body:

a bowl full of bees.