This morning, I found a few pieces of yellow paper with this scribbled on it. It describes, in part, riding the T home from Boston. We’d gone to The Mapparium with a friend. It’s a bit stream of consciousness but enjoy anyway.

The flowers could be eaten or thrown in the fire. Same with ambition. The sweater cuffs are rolled, the sleeves too long. I can’t stay. Really, I can’t find my way home. An anthem from the 70’s:  Come down off your throne. Toss off the ermine-lined robe. As if you ever preferred being clothed. But the naked knees and throat make such easy targets. Groveling can be done in pants or not in pants. So can sex. The man pissing at the Hynes Auditorium T stop had a big rip in the rear of his denim pants — his dirty, wrinkled ass visible through the tear. Somehow the sight of that flesh disturbed more than the pee arcing out of his penis. Two of us grab a seat going west. “Get in the old car. Get in the old car.” Light flashes on cement near Fenway, between trees near Hammond Pond. Everything has a voice, a place. To whom do you speak? What chorus pours forth? She once gave a damn, now her eyes burn, sometimes from the cold, other times from the heat. The rib cage is rusty. It’s caked with flaky debris, oxidized from exposure. We go in. Then we go out. The singing bowl silent. The shoes cold when we slide them on in the morning. He used to chew shoes, the dog, but now he doesn’t. He still likes coat pockets redolent with the smell of treats though. Did you close the coat-closet door all the way? A clock announces a dance. I made myself write “dance” instead of “doom.” Too much death talk gets boring. Where are we? Three seconds to midnight? Eight? I plan to stitch lines of green thread while sitting next to a fire later and I hope my eyes won’t be burning then. I hope the dog will have left my parka alone. There will be no savage music for accompaniment, and by that I mean no news from the red, red, red inhabitants on The Hill. The flowers stab the sky with their beautiful fecundity. The rug, he says, captivates me. Have you listened even a little? To the eggs, sizzling in the pan, to the clack of a keyboard, to a bossy ticking clock? I will leave my shoes where you won’t trip over them because I’m nice that way. I can’t wait to have two front teeth again, the apparatus of waiting so cumbersome and it makes me lisp. “Find another Isaac,” we pronounce as if it were a simple finger-snapping matter. I too will die if I don’t keep writing. Really? Is that really true? The home and its distractions. For instance, making butternut ginger soup. Then almond biscotti. Then hummus. There’s dog hair to sweep up, always. I like to do it when the sun shines on the floor so that the retrieval of order is immediately observable. Then there are leaves and branches fallen out back, needing disposal. Stairs to vacuum. A toilet to swish. And a beckoning couch. You get the idea. There’s so much to do that is not writing that my hands burn, my hips too, and my eyes water. I can’t find my way home. Maybe home is nothing without a hand waggling ink across the legal pad. There, it announces, I exist. I’m coming down off my throne. I’m not talking about death. The flowers are not mine, not any of ours. They circle the heads of state and by heads of state, I mean the crowns of diplomats. Those flimsy collections of cells and intention, bartering, pressuring, ordering, judging – but with what intention, you ask, what intention? How to make building materials out of rubble, is a thing I heard on the way here. Gaza. Gaza. Gaza. One co-author dead. Covid. Covid. Covid. I can’t find my way home and I have a home. I struggle to imagine otherwise. The clock telling me to eat an orange, to laugh, goddamnit. Orchid breath, singing, bull brain, and mercury feet. Why not?

This video was recorded on 1/1/24. (Unless you see a recent one from Boulder like my husband does?)

Pics below from December 2023.