michael mischa honchock
Made choices not from equilibrium, as sometimes thought, but from crests or troughs. Just a ship at sea. I can’t get over how primitive I feel in even acknowledging that, how human, how dare I.
Is it always this way, though, so reactive? I sometimes get sea sick and think it should be spelled -ee rather than -ea, thinking if enough people hear me as me (t=0, where t stands for thought) then maybe they’d show me how to cut the kinds of breaks I’ve been so loath to cut myself and be usual.
Had an idea. I’d play on what “better” means. Mix it up with the categorical imperative of the should, a played-out life theme of troubling externality, but tied to illness—of mind, of heart, the usual. Weary of weariness, that sort of illness, I thought, anxious my abstractions would never get me out of the gate, recalling Pound and characteristically reading too much into things like when someone says too little or too much.
Is anyone worried I’ll succumb again? I am, sometimes, but I have confident things to say this time. Responses, I’d call them. And recovery, but unclinically. The benefits of solitude, together with you. It’s not thoughts that are dangerous, but thought patterns. The dream is more than process. I’ll still love you when you’re fat on Monday. Taken out of context, these things make sense.
Nothing is indefectible. The car is clean and it’s raining. I love you but I’m not the only one who has. These are hard things for idealists.
Living in a way that’s built up around preconditions for that verysame way of living. Inflexibility as though by right of having chosen “this” path, presuming singularities left and right. Difficulty of accepting disruption, like listening to hammering upstairs all Saturday morning. Didn’t go to an office all week to pay for this, he says.
Thunderstorms again, and with each flash I count the miles between soul and spirit, closing fast, thinking of what if and what to say.
Between you and me, I miss it. How’s that for a start.
A start, but will a last act follow before it’s curtains, you ask? Yes, certainly, without a doubt, though I’m afraid it’ll just be words again.
The ground again, yesterday,
it’s still there, or was, and it’s
still hard with these pauses to
tell where one step begins and
the last one ends,
so might as well admit I’m
still somewhere
on it, the ground, that is, though
proud this time (for once?), not
so much held down as simply
looking, quick on my feet and
quicker yet to be still.
Those two over there, yeah, the table in the corner right there. Before you got here he said: “Are you more of a wine girl or, uh, martinis? I’m not much of a wine guy but I’d maybe go for a pinot grigio.” The waitress has come by their table three times already. Oh, no, don’t be sorry. I was enjoying myself, doing a little eavesdropping, just hanging out, killing time, etcetera etcetera. When they sat down he opened his menu and remarked that it was much longer than what he saw online as if making a pronouncement about a new land he’d just set foot upon, his crew of weary sailor-explorers in tow. Then they were talking about some tabloid scandal, hard to say which one, hard to say it matters—“I never really followed up,” he said—really said “followed up”—“but from what I can tell, he was totally in on it.” She said “yeah.” That’s the only word I’ve heard from her, might be the only one she knows. Yeah, aren’t you funny. Look if you can, at the earnestness of his expression, look how vacuous. It’s astounding. I feel like we’re on safari. How does a face get so empty? I know I’m being judgy, I know, I’m probably just trying to impress you with the astuteness of my observations and my charming prattling commentary. It’s really not cute. Does “judgy” end in -ey or just -y? Ah but now here comes their food and wait… wait… yep, phones….
The past is nothing to run from or fear. Wholeness, they say, and I think about it. Nothing back there to fly from in fright, nothing apart, nothing to meet with shame or trepidation or run from like a monster threat in knowing silent lurking hot pursuit down a long dark corridor around the corner of which you’ve just turned and you think you can hear him back there breathing, hear his sneaking footfalls, feels how he knows you, hoping there’s a room to duck into and a door to lock forever before he sees you. None of that. Be there, be here, be with all of it because it’s all with you. In the open, in the light, in the shadows, for that matter, and most of it doesn’t.
Somewhere back there you said hello and I told myself it was ok to dream.
In the past are things like this, too, I remind myself.
