Touching death every day
The poet said they were a god and I believed them.
SPRING IS IN THE AIR. Happy Real New Year. I’m thinking about poppies and jasmine, nasturtiums and sweet peas.
I bought seeds yesterday. I couldn’t think of anything more hopeful. I walked to the garden this morning and thought about how closely death had touched it. I turned the soil over with my hands. No one taught me but I can tell when the soil is good and hearty, crumbly and sweet.
The animal in me, this creature pacing, hunkers down. The closer you get to death the closer you get to being alive. The meaty peat of it. Sweat, blood, and tears in the garden. I dig angry and prune sad. Every feeling imaginable. Amused by the greedy gophers and their underground tunnels, the disappearing act they pull with my fava beans. Fury at the thief who plucked the zinnias. Astonishment at the first shocks of green. Satisfaction after weeding. Playful as I dream of cosmos and asters, sweet Williams and impatiens.
I’ve been living in an extended winter. I am comfortable here, where there is contemplation and introspection, a slow thawing of the mind and heart. I shy away from the heat, fearful of what it will reveal. But what would it mean to dance with that flame? Creativity is nothing but energy, action and heat. Watch a poet speak, a great poet speak, and you will see this exchange in motion.
There’s nothing more frightening than a powerful woman. Have you seen it? Now that’s something I’d like to try. A hat I could wear, a sexy I could slip into.
The poet said they were a god and I believed them. I thought, I’m doing that too. Chasing infinity. I remember the first time I stood in front of a crowd and felt that particular mixture of fear and desire. (Anyone who stands on a stage wants to be loved. Don’t let them fool you.) The room was full of eyes that, looking back, couldn’t be trusted. Yet I opened my mouth and the silver came, poured out of me and into the palms of the others. There were tears in their eyes, diamonds I plucked out one by one.
The writer is a shapeshifter, a spy, a seer, a trickster. Watch me do this dance, this sly shuffle.
S once said that this must be my first life. Certainly I’m a baby. But am I certain to be a fool? Sometimes I sweat when I write because I care that much. How embarrassing. And so it is with the Fool: be he zero or twenty-two, he goes forward, conspicuously solar, across the virgin soil of knowledge beyond the city of men.