V

goddamn it, I am going to write here for a minute even though I have to reside over classes in the morning, even though I am in love and have to negotiate the solitary voice, even though I want to rest my post-whiplash neck on a warm pillow and let the sky take me. I drove back to Hudson tonight after five days in the city, (saw a fireplace video in a fireplace and other visual puns, drank chocolate beer, saw angela dufresne's curated gallery show which featured my old friend tim davis, saw V for Vendetta, saw C. Whitehead do a Q&A, saw S Silverman tell the aristocrats joke). Anyway now I'm back and I went to a fundraiser for the democrats of Hudson, a few, real, heartbreaking small-town democrats hashing out what to do with a chunk of land, yelling about taxes and race across a bar. This town found me.

V for Vendetta rocked. David Denby is a micropussy if he didn't like it.

I need to remember not to lose track of myself. Remember not to set up my writing against relationship; writing always pathetically and mutely prevails.

California: you can keep shaking and shimmering and washing out like a photo negative

I have work to do.

The sky in Hudson is deep blue out the window from the desk I built in my new apartment. I can see the river and the mountains and the cars parked outside the oldest train station in the country. The train itself, clearing her oiled and earnest throat on the hour. There is this delicious sense of space. I feel calm and, in a way I'm not sure I've felt before, I feel accompanied.

the eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray


what the monk said, regarding the center of things, how you're always at it.

For my next act, I'll set myself on fire

First, for anyone who keeps up with me this way, I should apologize for the dark evasiveness of the last entry. I am alive and relatively unscathed.

The day before the accident I was teaching Russell Banks' "The Sweet Hereafter" and read aloud the passage where Dolores Driscoll describes losing control of her vehicle in an upstate New York snowstorm. She describes the "formal clarity of her mind" when she resigned that she was "no longer the driver" and spun off the road.

this is what I remember: my ipod was playing.
I was running a little late.
It was starting to snow.
I started swerving.
I thought I fucked up.
I thought I'll get away with it; I always do.
I kept spinning.
I knew it was going to end with impact.
I missed the other cars.
There were trees around me.
I jolted back and forward.
I was okay.
My ipod was still playing.
I thought I got away with it.
I crawled out the window, broke some branches and crawled on to my hood.
A man in a truck stopped.
He asked who I had called.
I said "I'm not sure what one does in this situation."
I started giggling.
He showed me that my car was jammed up in to a tree.
The sheriff came.
Things started to get a little grim.

But I am okay, lucky, more sure than ever of my die hard will to live.

The neck brace is off, a little whiplash and a rental car for the time being.
Be back soon.

xoc

use your damn imagination

I would put a photo of myself in a neck brace here, as per Tim Earley's request, if only I had a digital camera.

Car accident blog entry to follow...