tiny spirits

We repeat a process of hoping our bodies to the future though for now mine eats cucumbers in bed. I had a dream about a crystal blue pool. I felt stupid when I saw the ocean.

Being really alone means being free from anticipation. Even to know that something is going to happen, that I am required to do something is an intrusion on the emptiness I am after. What I love to see is an empty diary, pages and pages of nothing planned. A date, an arrangement, is a point in the future when something is required of me. I begin to worry about it days, sometimes weeks ahead. Just a haircut, a hospital visit, a dinner party. Going out. The weight of the thing-that-is-going-to-happen sits on my heart and crushes the present into non-existence. My ability to live in the here and now depends on not having any plans, on there being no expected interruption. I have no other way to do it. How can you be alone, properly alone, if you know someone is going to knock at the door in five hours, or tomorrow morning, or you have to get ready and go out in three days’ time? I can’t abide the fracturing of the present by the intrusion of a planned future.

Madwomen: the ones who are compelled to redo acts of birth every day. I think, “Nothing is a given for me.” I wasn’t born for once and for all. Writing, dreaming, delivering; being my own daughter of each day.

The Honeymoon Killers (Leonard Kastle, 1969)