a vacuum of images, words, energy. each night I look for a beginning, but it began in the middle as I drove through the stripped leaves, the broken and twisted trees, the homes that weren’t anymore. I was already full, saturated to the point of silence. I saw the pictures, of course – I saw hundreds of them, thousands. These particular pictures say no words. Nothing says anything until you see it with your own eyes.
I was taken on a tour the day after I arrived with Cole driving – a tour of wreckage, a tour of lost dreams, a tour that told evidence of death. I think I figured out the markings spray painted on the houses. Some were scattered, some dripping in desperation, but most were regulated, plain as day. I waw all the X’s with various things written in them in the cold folds – I believe that the bottom part of the X was bodies found inside. 0; 0; 0; 2; 0; 0; 1… It kept going. Occasionally, I saw “2 dogs”, 1 cat… The weight as we went through one of the bad parts – the energy that pressed down on me, brought tears to my eyes. i wasn’t going to cry – I already had. I’ve cried too much, for everything.
(Will I ever cry enough for my Bean?)
I took a few pictures at first, but then, I stopped. These pictures mean nothing. It needs to me seen, to be walked through. This city has a strength unlike any other I’ve been to, but then, I have never seen a city that has been through this. Still, it has an incomprable soul – I have never heard anyone who has lived her for any amount of time call it anything but “home”. I call it mine now, and it is.
Some things you can just simply feel.
Fuck – so much to say. Too much. A vaccuum that I desperately try to empty, but it seems as if I never will. I never want to be empty. I have been so full these days that it seemed like I was. Let it go let it out make room because I feel and I feel hard and heavy even in the occasional lightness and I don’t hide and I choose to give all and don’t stay, don’t pretend, if you aren’t willing to accept that. A directed “fuck you” to an illusion. It’s deeper than you can ever believe, it goes far further than you could ever understand in your denial eyes. It was not right, but what is right about being as close to someone as i can get? You knew…
I don’t forget enough, and I don’t believe I will ever forget anything. I remember, I need to. This is all we have. Stories. Stories to stay in the middle. I was Jekyll so recently and destroyed. I need to keep the middle, the in-between. I don’t tell stories, I just fucking write, and sometimes it just doesn’t make any sense.
So what?
It keeps me in the middle, and I begin again.
I can start my dreams wherever I want, but, without question though prohibitied by time, I will live them all. There is no line anymore.
“ ‘It wasn’t any old bird; it was a bird that knew my name.’
The doctor leaned back in his chair. ‘Do you keep a diary?’
‘I have a collection of silver notebooks.’
‘Are they consistent?’
‘Yes. I buy them from the same department store.’
‘I mean, do you keep one record of your life, or several? Do you feel like you have more than one life perhaps?’
‘Of course I do. It would be impossible to tell one single story.’
‘Perhaps you should try.’
‘A beginning, a middle, and an end?’
‘Something like that – yes.’
I thought of Babel Dark and his neat brown notebooks, and his wild torn folder. I thought of Pew tearing stories out of light.
‘Do you know the story of Jekyll and Hyde?’
‘Of course.’
‘Well then – to avoid either extreme, it is necessary to tell all the lives in between.’
– Jeanette Winterson –
– Lighthouse Keeping
of Petals & Thorns 