Last night, over for wine, I read some new work to Herman Berlandt who said I have a very distinctive voice and style. He notes the image, voice, language, emotion, intellect, philosophy, social theology, even political, the layers I try to include.
Yesterday on my way to Bolinas, I stopped off at Point Reyes, at the vet's office to see if I could get a prescription for Panalog, and worm medicine from Dr. Fisher. I'd written a note explaining how I had lanced and treated the cat's leg wound, having massaged the puss out from between the muscles. I irrigated it three times a day with HCl. I kept wanting to write it in shorthand but I can't remember the periodic table formula and confuse it with the formula for bleach.
So I knocked on the door though it was 6 PM. A cleaning woman answered, and I handed her the note for Dr. Fisher. Then I said disbelievingly, Debbie? She looked dumb was about to close the door on me, then changed her mind, saying she had changed her name.
She said she was known these days as Nina. Now she had to explain to the two younger women who this Debbie was, yes. And she nearly tried to shut the door on my foot and the past as well.
She said she was known these days as Nina. Now she had to explain to the two younger women who this Debbie was, yes. And she nearly tried to shut the door on my foot and the past as well.
Debbie Howard, who was a friend from my childhood, and I talk about old home week. We gossip for a good two hours. She and Sarah live in Inverness. Their brother Guy lives in the city and has two kids. One's going to Harvard like his grandfather, ken, and their little sister, Jennifer, too has a couple of kids.
When I got to Bolinas I told Patrick Flynn the stories, and he wondered what the moon was in. We seem to have all these crazy meet-ups while the moon is in Sagittarius according to the Bolinas Hearsay News
My horror-scope reports an adventurous road trip was about to happen, and so it did. All the way to Bolinas. Yes, I'm feeling lighter, Jupiter is the planetary ruler of Sagittarius. Gemini and the moon squares that Virgo symbolic fire. We walk down to the Bolinas Library and dance to grunge music until the cows come home, I can barely make it back up to the top of the Mesa.
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With powdered lime I purify the outhouse, dusting it white, the piles of shit slowly climbing towards the toilet lid. Herman says lime is the secret, but the stench greets us anyway. I admire that ongoing whitewashed sculpture.
There's something to be said how we daily contribute our communion. There is beauty even in shit, the layered rosettes of toilet paper bloom against mountains of dung, and the sun warms our legs as we sit and survey the garden of what we will later eat. The bowels letting go of the burden of our eating existence.
Verona goes over her lines as Eleanor of Aquitaine. I listened to her pain, the irony, he who imprisoned her, loved her. But he was meant to rule, so he imprisoned her for waging war against her husband.
Herman in Verona ask about my love life. I have no ready answers to give, for I created the distance between us. Vorona asks if it's better to have meaningless sex with someone you don't love, or live in a sexless country.
Herman says the distance between Sonny and me has more to do with that sexual potential, of what might happen, rather than a lack of desire. Verona tells me if he keeps going back to the ex-girlfriend, and has been picking fights, he's afraid of commitment, so the trouble between us is sexual though there's no sex between us. Therein lies the rub.
What would I do with my life if there was no possibility that I would fail? Herman asks me. And I can't get past that domestic laundry of wanting to be with someone, be it Sonny and Nathan, knowing there'd be times when I'd go crazy.
But if I had the option of having both the domestic and the artistic life, what would I choose? It's more than what I have to give, give up my art even when it doesn't come to me easily? I remain loyal to it.
Herman notes that I'm not producing much these days, but it's strong and succinct. What would happen if I was able to live my dream? Well, the element of surprise always arises, how would I survive? Words like "but" and "how" are open to interpretation.
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