by the sea

It is in the early morning–not too early–that I sit on the rocks with my feet dangling out over the water and watch the water, watch the clouds lift and descend, the waves lapping lazily up onto the shore, no wind, no wind to speak of at all, the sailboats still in front of the worn painted houses, their distinct shutters and trim, the trees beside the houses sculpted by the wind and water of unstill days. A man sits with a paper filled with words all quốc ngữ to me–he only nods at me. He puts the paper down as I have mine and just looks out at it all, the peacefulness, the nothing. I make my way back across the high rocks back to the beach now, loving this game of how not to drop these words I have just written and of where to put my feet, like a puzzle, like something to fill my attention instead of the routine dull thoughts that sometimes seem more important than exactly this, exactly what is right in front of me right now.

Speak now. Speak. Say the words that define this, that define our lives, our feelings. Speak. And do. Do not wait, as time goes by, and even on still days, what is here today is rare, may float away on less still days and not disappear, not fade, but grow harder and harder to uncover, harder still to grasp.

reverie

I finally went downstairs and turned the heat on this morning. It has been raining now for days, much less like summer today than I had hoped when I heard the thunder start in the early morning. No run. The rain came gushing down, and though it is quiet now, the chill has returned. Inside again. Like last night, the desire for so much more.

It is Friday night, and I am in a shopping mall–any shopping mall, it does not matter. They are all the same. I pass the stores, their manufactured signature scents drifting out to the middle, the music, the consumer-enticing ambiance. Williams-Sonoma is a pristine ode to cooking, a diverted desire as I think about it, cooking being that sensual release for those who have either given up on sex or have a lot of it–seduction or its surrogate, depends on the context, depends on whether I get to fuck you tonight, or if I fulfill my need with a plate of fresh figs, drizzled with honey, tangy yogurt on the side. Yes I would feed you these miniature cunts if you were here. But alas you are not.

I wonder as I watch the various people who have gathered here at the mall tonight: the young man with a paperback and a ballpoint, stopping, marking passages as he sits seemingly oblivious to the world around him. A man paces, gesticulating, as he yells into a cell phone–he is not yelling, but it is big, important, whatever he is saying, and perhaps everything he says is big and important while he waits outside a store, waits for his name to be called at the restaurant, waits. Most people just walk by, in pairs, alone, in packs. It all seems like paper.

I miss you here as I go about the ordinary days and my daydreams, I imagine the waves and the starry skies and the low clouds and the confinement, the freedom, where nothing matters, where everything matters. But here I am, with my dreams of clattering streets and cardamom, diesel fuel and coffee and bread baking as the rain falls somewhere else. Here I am, wishing for more time, wishing for no time, for time to disappear completely, for time to evaporate into the air, with the space, no space, no boundaries, only dreams.

And so I dream, and write, here, in a warm house, a cozy house, a house heated to stave off the summer chill. We are somewhere else.

black and white

“Everything looks worse in black and white.”

–Paul Simon

The essence of everything is in black and white. It does not look worse. Color only distracts me.

Old photographs are so rarely in color, mostly are images of lines and shadow, black to grey to white and back again.

I wanted color television when I was little and we didn’t have it. But when at last we could see everything in color, it suddenly seemed more real. Less fun.

Now the default is color, as if we can achieve a greater reality when we add the hues to our memories. Can we?

Can we ever truly reproduce anything we felt in a moment to a photo?, a transcript of words spoken?, the clearest copy?, the lucid thought explicated. Examined. Defended. ?

Perhaps the best we can do is to distill a few moments, preserve the essence of them somehow. A photo in black and white. A charcoal sketch. Black words on a white page.

A black night with the lights turned out, and nothing but the streets below and the sound of the rain on the rooftops, on the ground, beyond.

The faint sound of an inhalation, an exhalation, next to me.

inferno

Today on the hottest of days I walk out into the hot morning and watch a sky that has already opened up once and is sure to pour out once more at least before the day is over. It rains again. It does not get cooler, but indeed hotter, and I am hotter, and I want you now, want you naked, want our hot sweaty raw bodies in my bed in the heat in some vain effort to put out this fire. But no. We will never stop until we are sweeping out ashes in some distant morning, spent but not satiated, never satiated. So now this inferno rages on, keeps me hotter, makes me sweat more and want you more, want you hard and inside me, makes me crave the rain, makes me wet makes me wait, patiently–no not at all patient! I am impatient, waiting, anticipating, not in some romantic sense, but in all my gluttonous desire throbbing and wishing to peel off your clothes right now, to lick you, to eat you, to have you in every sense of the word, in every direction and in every moment, impossible I know, but all the more desirable for it.

shhh….

Today I watched a movie, in the beautiful afternoon. It seems sometimes there are things that should be shown in broad daylight, and a film about erotic art and our habit of hiding it away seems exactly the sort of film that needs light of day.

It is no surprise that erotic art could be considered shameful… least, not in this country. Some is simply not noticed for the most part, there on display with no attention. Some is intentionally under lock and key, in secret cabinets. There for the looking (sometimes), but a person might have to know to ask. Some works remain visible, but censored: a fig leaf, an amputation, an intentional turn toward the wall.

I walked in late, just as the film was paging through works of French literature. At once, I was reminded of the thrill of PQ, where I hid in the stacks, devouring tomes of forbidden images, words–yes, in French…

Apollinaire loved Lou’s ass. I remember this, remember wondering if I read it correctly, then being absolutely fascinated and turned on by the discovery, the thought of a man dreaming of anal sex while frightened in the trenches during World War I. Yes. I discovered so much of myself in these words, uncovering the uncoverable–I was young, uncovering myself. The erotic, the possibilities, the spreading of my body, open, my fear, a finger planted deep in my ass while my own poet fucked me. Yes, yes, I came as I never knew I could.

This exquisite pleasure was hidden my entire life, penises cut off in so many ways, as they were hidden in drawers somewhere in the Vatican, maybe other places. Our sexuality shameful? No, so beautiful, so essential. So much still to find.

If you have the opportunity, see the movie.