i come home today & someone has turned the house upside down. bean has obviously been to the store, has bought soap & fruit & graham crackers & health food cereal made by small midwest companies, has half-stripped the sheets from the bed (why?), has removed from the refrigerator all the leftovers that have turned bad, has placed those leftovers into a garbage bag which is sitting on the floor. here is what it looks like: it looks like she shot out of bed in the morning, ran to the store, came home to put everything away: & then
something happened & she
had to leave NOW. i am making that part up, it is all i have to go by until she calls me later & i can ask her for myself.
but for now it feels like a scaled-down version of a pompeii excavation: mundane activity suddenly interrupted, & i am walking through it wondering what then? what then?
:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:4 notes from coming-home, in 2 sections.
clothes with words.- on the #10 the man sitting in front of me with a baseball cap turned around so i could read the front which said NEVER TO OLD TO PARTY & my brain kept yelling "[sic]! [sic]!" the whole ride
- at broad + high a man with a shirt from some local barbecue place with a picture of a pig holding knife + fork in that elbows-on-table greedy feed-me posture, you know, & under the pig it said in big red letters, NO PIG IS SAFE
commuting music.
- on the corner by the clinic, waiting to cross the street: a woman waiting at the light all alone in a beat-up white hatchback with all the windows rolled down, absolutely dancing in the driver's seat, singing along to the radio. i turned to look at her & we made eye contact & stood/danced there a few minutes, gazing at each other, grinning like fools
- on the #2 a man listening through headphones to tom petty, "i won't back down," so loudly that i thought for most of the song that he had a boombox. as the bus neared his stop he moved up to the front of the bus, the music pouring out of his headphones, & he started singing along. very exciting. i am pretty sure i have sung along on the bus before, so who am i to talk
:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:We listen to this station later in the morning as we head back to Quemado. In the midst of a swirl of Navajo words, the announcer says "Tennessee Ernie Ford" but never plays an Ernie song. Since this is a name one rarely mentions in passing, I drive myself crazy wondering why, why, why. Later in the afternoon, a Santa Fe cab driver tells us that in Spanish, quemado means burned.� Sarah Vowell, Radio On,
which i am devouring now, bean brought it home last night & i am sucking it up faster than it probably deserves
:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:also i come home from work to this e-mail from ananikko & i am still floored, much more than the situation warrants, & i will return to my tired old anti-love diatribes & manifesti.
maybe what i want to say all along is that the reason i tough it out, with respect to love of all types, is that the pain is mitigated & mixed with joy, & love is the great sweeping thing behind all the other pain|joy institutions i couldn't live without: all my shelves of books, all my shelves of music, that agony i get in a museum or in someone's house when i lean in real damned close to a painting because i want it to take up all the space i can see.
but i think i would prefer to read frank o'hara & listen to the 6ths, rather than fall in love, because then at least i know what is coming.
i continue to dissect my own love for the predictable, & i find that i am one boring woman. i don't care. i am anti-love & boring & i am looking forward to finishing writing this & taking my headphones into the bedroom & lying down to be swallowed up.
:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:
ps it is raining, finally finally it is raining, i can smell it all the way in here. i am in love, painlessly, joyously, with this rain. watch out i will run outside, without my headphones.
