What I am about to tell you

1.
What I am about to tell you may or may not matter in the long run.

2.
I have taken to alphabetizing the things in my kitchen. Thus colander next to coriander, dairy next to dishwashing liquid, ice next to insecticide. Anything can be held together by a web of associations: armoire to banister, by virtue of setting. Clavicle to daffodil, by family of sounds. Elephants to falafel because of that day in December, gash to harbor because of that summer with nothing better to do. Illicit to jeopardy, jeopardy to karma, karma to long life or lip service or manual labor, manual labor to never again, never again to on one condition to private practice to questionnaire. And so on. Anything is the truest beginning of what I am about to say.

3.
Words most probably included in what I am about to tell you: accept, again, alcohol, apparently, bakery, be, because, blue, bordering, come, company, continuous, crap, dashboard, definitely, don’t, drawer, end, enough, exactly, fantasy, forget, haha, how, hydrangeas, ink, insult, maybe, modern, more, must, nerve, never, no, of, period, phone, please, psycho, ridiculous, ring, slab, sleeping, sorry, splat, stash, teeth, television, tender, then, there, this, though, thus, very, wtf, yes.

4.
What I am about to say may be said in other words, and these words may be divided into several categories resembling a system of looking at flies: a) detached, with a hint of disdain, b) obligatory, c) doubt replaced by candor, d) having slipped from one room to another, e) borrowed from the library, f) a subcategory of c), g) that which replays itself, h) without resignation.

We Put a Pearl in the Ground

Alive

Here

Back

Soon

Yours,

They Say It’s Your Birthday

For my dad’s seventieth birthday, my mom whipped up an extravaganza, decking their home with balloons and lights and candles, setting up party tents in the garage and backyard, preparing a spread for roughly a hundred of their closest friends. We children were reduced to children again–that is, told to stay out of the way as the house was being decorated, and more importantly, made to prepare a song-and-dance program. Fortunately, the bulk of it could be delegated to the grandchildren, but we couldn’t not do anything at all, and so my sister and I rehearsed a couple of my dad’s favorites at the last minute, and as expected, come performance time, she played the piano perfectly, while I botched the second-to-the-last line of the third and last song, looking like a total idiot as I tried to decipher the words my mom was mouthing to coax me out of forgetfulness while my dad gestured for me to hold the mic closer to my mouth. Nothing like a song-and-dance program to eradicate, in the span of a few minutes, one’s hard-earned integrity.

Disappear

1.
What is a shadow? It is the self without a face or a name, all outline and no feature, the self on the verge of being erased. It is the incidental child of matter and light. Look how it spreads itself on the ground, weary but weightless, unable to leave a trace.

Another one of those days when we’re standing by the side of a road with our mothers, sweating in our Sunday dresses, waiting for the bus home. You stand in the puddle of your mother’s shadow, twisting your body so your own vanishes inside the darkness. I’m invisible, you shout, counting the three shadows left, then blowing me a stiff kiss. It’s cooler here too.

Is it possible for this not to be a story of disappearance?

2.
Your voice from a phone booth on a sidewalk, in the rain, outside a diner with an unreadable sign. Your voice speaking in code, coming to me in bits and pieces, syllable by syllable. Your voice doubled, echoing, bouncing off a stained glass dome, traveling through a dark tunnel where a train is about to pass. The lilt in your voice betrays you as you pretend to sell me potato peelers and non-stick frying pans. Your voice from another time zone, competing with the waves of the sea. In a letter with no return address, your voice cracks jokes and says “my feet hurt” in another language. Your voice in the tired words on my computer screen, hidden somewhere in the identical towns of postcards. Your voice like a shadow on a road.

Wednesday

On the other end of the phone I keep putting down to look for the refrigerator magnet, you are asking the same question again and again. Nothing is working out. The comedian cracks another joke and a hundred cartoon mouths fill the screen, gnawing stupidly at my reflection. I put my finger on your face, my face, the pizza delivery number, the quotable quote, the postcard from the museum. I scratch the surface, fish out the fake flowers. I want to dream you alive, I say. I have no other answer.

Method

At last, the mouth opens.
The afternoon steps out.
With it, a ferry, the passage of time.
With it, a turnstile that cannot be unstuck.
There is material in all this atmosphere.
It is almost apologetic. It almost knows.

Where it comes from. The mouth coughs up.
Another mouth. And another. And another.
The afternoons cannot tell themselves.
Apart. The apology attaches to a noun.
It wants to occupy space.
It wants to come back.

How the Heart Misbehaves

Like everything that had anything to do with you, it involved aftertaste, its secrets held office in an apiary drained of dimension and drawn with a stick on the ground, it accused and acquiesced, it acquired landscape and road rage and stuttered its way to every floor.

I pluck it from its station on the shelf. I slip it into a bag it immediately punctures. I tell it to keep still. It gives me no other choice. Quiet now, and the marker poised above the white tag, the word about to be spelled: perspicacious, if not peripatetic, if not pernicious.

By the tenth dream, the phrase astringent sadness begins to acquire color and texture. He stands by the window, squinting at sunlight the way he squints at idiots or road signs, which is to say he is pentatonic by nature, which is neither compliment nor critique. Aphorism #44: You have girded your loins in a most laughable way for this world. Today: You have __________ in a most laughable way for this world.

Notes on Insomnia

Carson:
“For no one can deny that Penelope is a master of sleep. She goes to bed dozens of times in the course of the story, has lots of sleep shed on her by gods, experiences an array of telling and efficacious dreams and evolves her own theory of how to read them. Moreover, Homer shows us as early as Book 4 that sleep is the deepest contract she shares with her husband. Miles apart, years apart, consciously and unconsciously, they turn the key of each other… Sleep works for Penelope. She knows how to use it, enjoy it, theorize it and even to parody it, should need arise.”

Kafka:
“From a certain point on, there is no more turning back. That is the point that must be reached.”

“The decisive moment of human development is continually at hand. This is why those movements of revolutionary thought that declare everything preceding to be an irrelevance are correct—because as yet nothing has happened.”

Cat:

“Lying there and staring at the ceiling, waiting for that sleepy feeling…”

Cage:

“If anybody is sleepy ,

let him go to sleep”

Sabi nga ng graffiti sa Maginhawa:

Caca Loca.

Short Walk

Took a walk up the mountain to catch a view of the Alps on the other side. To stand in one country and look at another while thinking of a third where you are and I am not.

Based on one sighting, Italian cats are fat, fluffy, snobbish, and orange.

Olive trees, as it turns out, are small.

Blake was fond of filling spaces in between words with the line of beauty. A tilde for every other vacant space.

Based on two sightings, orange things thrive in Italy.

Took a break in an empty shed and wondered what the balls were for.

Ah.

Didn’t manage to make my way to the top. The wind was too strong I thought a tornado was about to hit. Was less scared of the force than the ridiculous howling, which later on, turned out to be all talk.

Two Postcards

First Day

Salutation. Identification of location, time, and view. Description of bus ride and itinerary. Complaint about the weather. Quibble about the inappropriately cosmopolitan feel of structure from which view is observed. Commentary about architecture leading to remembrances of trips past leading to assessment of current company leading to desire for alcohol and sleep. Alcohol granted, funny detail about alcohol acquisition and current company. Acknowledgment of space constraints, expression of high hopes for coming days, subtle longing for absent company, explicit words of love. Yours—

Last Day

Salutation. Identification of departure time. Reference to image. Disappointment over failure to note down title and artist as well as failure to take photographs. Mention of running joke throughout stay, haha. Recollection of quotable quotes from current company and newly learned Latin words, promise to elaborate upon arrival. Acknowledgment of poor handwriting leading to pun leading to reference to film involving pine trees and ’80s actors. Beginnings of funny anecdote… promise to elaborate upon arrival. Admission of pointlessness of sending postcard bound to be overtaken by its sender. Exclamation used to convey recognition of foolish act. Yours—

My Funny Friend

I have decided on a place to eat in at midday, a place to eat in at night, a place to have my drink in after dinner. I have arranged my little life.

Jean Rhys