pink. like flesh. like meat. i shred the salmon on my plate, feed it to you on a fork. pink like lips and backs. sand stuck to my tender skin. ice cream too sweet to enjoy.
the trees go brown then bare. the sky rarely blooms for me anymore. but your hands are still pink and nipped, by the mice in your walls. they come whisper to me in the evening. they list all the pink they’ve seen. flushed deep, dark, rose, ruddy, bloody. pink like the summer. pink like the winter. pink like a newborn who will never quite grow out of his baby face.
i find hot pink ribbon at the store. bright and innocent like it’s not about to be crushed by my careless hands. by my desperation to glow pink in the dim light.
back to the single life.. sigh.. no its literally fine like my relationship with one person is different now but this is not fundamentally changing my existence. been thinking a lot about my relationship to monogamy and like i dont know. not sure that its for me still like its fine wtvs but maybe i don't like the feeling of owing someone permission. maybe i want to be able to have whatever kind of relationship i want with people without worrying about like 'cheating' or wtv. maybe thats sounds bad. idk its like the meme of 'i consent. i consent. i dont' like do i want there to always be secret third person in the room. i feel like id be fine if i was dating someone who had a romantic or sexual relationship with another person like thats fine? i can be friends with people who have other friends and it feels kinda not different. i dont think that contract of exclusivity is appealing to me at least not rn, maybe that will change maybe i will want that but i dont think i do right now
maybe not as fine as i thought. like i don't know that i had much choice but i don't know. i miss her in like a weird way like i know i'll still talk to her i know i'll see her soon but like i'm not going to be held in the same way i'm not going to have what i had before and that sucks it really does.. but like we both know it wasn't working that well it wasn't great i couldn't convince her that she's great and worthy of love and like that's not fair i just felt so helpless and like it was not equal... but its still difficult...
what even is a friend? a classmate who waves at me when we make eye contact across the lab? fragmented memories that reappear in my dreams? i wore your shirt to school today, walk through the quad like you'll see me. as if it's not 7pm. a warm dusk. i don't feel like myself in this shirt, maybe i feel like you.
some of these people i have know for years. for a couple, i know their jobs and relationships, where they come from, where they might go. most of them i don't even know their names but i'll remember their faces. none of them are my friends. i can recognize that. what boundary has yet to be crossed ?
“Things don’t have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What’s the function of a galaxy? I don’t know if our life has a purpose and I don’t see that it matters. What does matter is that we’re a part. Like a thread in a cloth or a grass-blade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass.”
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven (Diversion Books, April 20, 2014)
"people who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicity to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth."
“I want you to do this with me for one month. One month. Write 10 observations a week and by the end of four weeks, you will have an answer. Because when someone writes about the rustic gutter and the water pouring through it onto the muddy grass, the real pours into the room. And it’s thrilling. We’re all enlivened by it. We don’t have to find more than the rustic gutter and the muddy grass and the pouring cold water.”
— Marie Howe, Boston University’s 2016 Theopoetics Conference (via mothersofmyheart)
I ask my students every week to write 10 observations of the actual world. It’s very hard for them.
Ms. Tippett:
Really?
Ms. Howe:
They really find it hard.
Ms. Tippett:
What do you mean? What is the assignment? 10 observations of their actual world?
Ms. Howe:
Just tell me what you saw this morning like in two lines. I saw a water glass on a brown tablecloth, and the light came through it in three places. No metaphor. And to resist metaphor is very difficult because you have to actually endure the thing itself, which hurts us for some reason.
Ms. Tippett:
It does.
Ms. Howe:
It hurts us.
Ms. Tippett:
You naming something.
Ms. Howe:
We want to say, “It was like this; it was like that.” We want to look away. And to be with a glass of water or to be with anything — and then they say, “Well, there’s nothing important enough.” And that’s whole thing. It’s the point.
Ms. Howe:
It’s the this, right?
Ms. Howe:
Right, the this, whatever. And then they say, “Oh, I saw a lot of people who really want” — and, “No, no, no. No abstractions, no interpretations.” But then this amazing thing happens, Krista. The fourth week or so, they come in and clinkety, clank, clank, clank, onto the table pours all this stuff. And it so thrilling. I mean, it is thrilling. Everybody can feel it. Everyone is just like, “Wow.” The slice of apple, and then that gleam of the knife, and the sound of the trashcan closing, and the maple tree outside, and the blue jay. I mean, it almost comes clanking into the room. And it’s just amazing.
Ms. Tippett:
In some basic level, what they’ve done is just engage with their senses.
Ms. Howe:
Yeah, and have been present out of their minds and just noticing what’s around them, which is — we don’t do. And again, not to compare it to anything. They’re not allowed. And that’s very hard for them. And then on the fifth or sixth week, I say, “OK, use metaphors.” And they don’t want to. They don’t know how. They’re like, “Why would I? Why would I compare that to anything when it’s itself?” Exactly. Good question.
So then you think, why the necessity of a metaphor? Why do you have to use a metaphor now? Not just to do it to avoid it, but to do it to make it more there. And it’s very interesting.
The words and silences we live by. The rituals that sustain us. The poetry of ordinary time.
