THIS STRANGE CHANGE IN ATMOSPHERE
In general I don't trust the beach. Too many people constantly talking it up all the time, how great it is, how it relaxes. Too many ugly bodies. Too much skin showing. And then there is the matter of sand. Which is a very disturbing kind of matter. I'm looking at the ocean right now, and I guess I get it. But it just feels so obvious, or something. So proud of itself. What's it got to be so proud about. I like the mountains. How still they are. How stern. It's a better backdrop for me, who is always turning, churning enough, as it is. The mountains are the full-stop to my ellipses. The ocean? Too many dot-dot-dots. Too much hithering, thithering, there and back.
From up here, I don't mind looking at it, though.
But I still feel like, 'fuck you, ocean,' a little.
Last night some kind of tropical storm raged. The windows in the room where I am staying shook violently. The wind howled, loud and louder. I laid very still in my bed, and I felt the house sway, struggling to bear itself. I didn't sleep. At first, I enjoyed it. Who doesn't love a good storm. But as everything kept intensifying, to a seemingly impossible degree, I felt real fear. Beatrice's little porta-crib was near the shaking windows, and I dragged it to the other side of my bed. She slept soundly, blissfully even, the whole night--additional evidence that baby humans are their own species--but I kept wondering, irrationally, if I should wake her. To let her know of the imminent danger I felt, and then protect her from it? To hold something small, smaller than me.
This morning a crack in one of the windows near my head and some water on the floor upstairs seemed to be the only evidence of the long night of weather, a night that felt oddly like a vigil.
I have been feeling for some time that my life is being encroached upon by a new strangeness, something creeping and then suddenly roaring in, like a goddamn wave on the stupid shoreline, like weather, like the universe is folding in half, and I am in the crease. And this storm, all of that water and wind and tremor, confirmed it somehow.
Maybe I am harnessing the power of the elements. Maybe the elements are siphoning my abundant stores of confusion, translating them, spraying them all over my flimsy shelter. I feel filled with secrets. I don't know what they are. I wish someone would tell me.
Last night I had the sense that I was walking the plank of my very own self. It wasn't the death-fear. At least not the physical one. My arms were tied and my eyes were covered. There on the farthest edges of my craggiest perceptions, I felt frozen. Waiting for the big push.
*
A few things that, against forgetting, I want to note about Beatrice:
Chicago --> A'cago
flamingo ----> a'mingo
bringing two similar-ish things together and announcing: "FRIENDS!" ("fwends") These could be two crackers, two shoes, two hairpins, a crayon and paper, her blanket and stuffed animal, two shapes on TV.
the way she says names
the way she repeats most of what she hears, in some form or other, again and again, each time pressing it deeper and deeper into herself, further into her processing center
yawn/yarn confusion
I start to sing a song and she sometimes interrupts--"SELF!"--and then begins the song again, solo.
counting to sixteen, counting to twenty, minus a few, with a couple out of place
alphabet singing
"reading" books, with hand gestures
pandapanda
saying "circle" while drawing circle in the air
asking, after something good, "again?"
obsession with "dark," and as of yesterday's trip to weird arcade place, "cayry" (scary)
reading the spines of books near my bed, among them: Body-bear (Baudelaire) and Gogol
"no, no" with "tsk tsk" finger gesture
From up here, I don't mind looking at it, though.
But I still feel like, 'fuck you, ocean,' a little.
Last night some kind of tropical storm raged. The windows in the room where I am staying shook violently. The wind howled, loud and louder. I laid very still in my bed, and I felt the house sway, struggling to bear itself. I didn't sleep. At first, I enjoyed it. Who doesn't love a good storm. But as everything kept intensifying, to a seemingly impossible degree, I felt real fear. Beatrice's little porta-crib was near the shaking windows, and I dragged it to the other side of my bed. She slept soundly, blissfully even, the whole night--additional evidence that baby humans are their own species--but I kept wondering, irrationally, if I should wake her. To let her know of the imminent danger I felt, and then protect her from it? To hold something small, smaller than me.
This morning a crack in one of the windows near my head and some water on the floor upstairs seemed to be the only evidence of the long night of weather, a night that felt oddly like a vigil.
I have been feeling for some time that my life is being encroached upon by a new strangeness, something creeping and then suddenly roaring in, like a goddamn wave on the stupid shoreline, like weather, like the universe is folding in half, and I am in the crease. And this storm, all of that water and wind and tremor, confirmed it somehow.
Maybe I am harnessing the power of the elements. Maybe the elements are siphoning my abundant stores of confusion, translating them, spraying them all over my flimsy shelter. I feel filled with secrets. I don't know what they are. I wish someone would tell me.
Last night I had the sense that I was walking the plank of my very own self. It wasn't the death-fear. At least not the physical one. My arms were tied and my eyes were covered. There on the farthest edges of my craggiest perceptions, I felt frozen. Waiting for the big push.
*
A few things that, against forgetting, I want to note about Beatrice:
Chicago --> A'cago
flamingo ----> a'mingo
bringing two similar-ish things together and announcing: "FRIENDS!" ("fwends") These could be two crackers, two shoes, two hairpins, a crayon and paper, her blanket and stuffed animal, two shapes on TV.
the way she says names
the way she repeats most of what she hears, in some form or other, again and again, each time pressing it deeper and deeper into herself, further into her processing center
yawn/yarn confusion
I start to sing a song and she sometimes interrupts--"SELF!"--and then begins the song again, solo.
counting to sixteen, counting to twenty, minus a few, with a couple out of place
alphabet singing
"reading" books, with hand gestures
pandapanda
saying "circle" while drawing circle in the air
asking, after something good, "again?"
obsession with "dark," and as of yesterday's trip to weird arcade place, "cayry" (scary)
reading the spines of books near my bed, among them: Body-bear (Baudelaire) and Gogol
"no, no" with "tsk tsk" finger gesture