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

Dear this Past Week, I'm going to let Mrs. White & Colonel Mustard tell you how I feel. Yours no more, Kristen

SEE 3:16 TO 3:24, BELOW

Test of the Emergency Broadcast System

Frequently I find myself responding, usually silently, to the detractor(s) in my head. I'm aware that this is what some schizophrenics do, albeit out loud. If I'm doing something I'm not completely comfortable with, or if I'm putting off doing something that I know I should be doing, or if I'm trying to figure something out and going about it in an unsound, inadvisable manner, or if I'm looking for ______ in all the wrong places, I pipe up, and then I fire back. It's less my conscience that I wrangle with than my inner librarian-stenographer-accountant-life coach-trainer. That bitch is hardcore no fun. I spend a lot of time trying to please her.

She just told me to get up and do fifty jumping jacks and ten push ups, and I did.

Speaking of hearts, last week we found ourselves in a tile store. There are two tile stores in this town, and they are directly across the street from one another. We met in the one that closed earlier, and I'm walking around with Beatrice, staring at large slabs of taupe, completely confused as to what meant what, wondering how we wound up at a place in our lives where this activity was purported to be necessary. Because we are, apparently, moving into a house that needs, among other things, new tile. Sometimes it's like, oh my god, my little bougie corner of the world is too much for me. And then it's like, well, it's not like I'm driving to Walmart in a minivan! But then it's like, wait, a minivan might make sense one day! And look, I'm at Walmart, needing milk! And the voice is like, (disgusted): look at yourself. And then I'm like, but it's the closest store that's open! And I don't altogether hate being here! I mean, but I'm really conflicted about it!

Because, I think, hating Walmart and minivans, etc., is quite passe at this point, no? Hating "what America likes"? I am America, and I don't want to be America, but I don't want to not want to be America, because it's so fucking boring and blind to align oneself with the proclivities of privilege, and then deny the presence of that privilege, all in order to dissociate from a certain "kind" of person or people. Every time someone says, there should be Ulysses board books and organic kefir and wooden toys, not loud plastic made in China and cheap milk, a really dull academic gets its Ph.D., and Walmart grosses like ten billion dollars in compensatory sales.

Speaking of death, so we're at the tile store, a little dumbfounded, at least 2/3 of us thinking about dinner, and I'm observing that the guy who finally emerged to help us is acting a little less than friendly. I feel like maybe this is how it goes when you visit a tile store, how very much we have to learn. And I'm mumbling something about how the tile I want is in my head, based on a tea-set I saw in the window of an antique store in Alabama, white with a dusty rose-colored floral pattern on it, and he's saying, let me show you something in the back, and as we're walking back there, he half-turns to me and says, I know this will sound so weird, but is either you or your husband a doctor. I resisted telling him about my Ph.D. I asked what was wrong. He said that his eyes were swimming, his left arm was dead-feeling, and his chest felt tight. He was like a real-live heart attack brochure. My voice telling him that we needed to call 911 sounded absurdly calm. At first he waved off the idea, feebly, but we persuaded him easily. He was the only one there. Brian went around helping him to lock things and close warehouse doors using a forklift. I kept imagining the man falling to the ground. What would I do. What would Beatrice say. What if he died.

The ambulance arrived in a clamor of confusion--first they went across the street to the other tile store, because I had mistakenly given that address. The man half-hugged Brian as the EMS approached. We stood nearby as they checked his vitals. He looked terrified. They put him inside and drove away quickly.

Now when I think about tiles I think about hearts collapsing. I think about splat. I want to call to see if he's okay. I want to be more okay.