February 15, 2009

Bad day. Acid storm in the thorax. I thought it might have eaten a hole through at last, but through the day it calmed, and I was very, very careful. White grapes, soy milk, clam chowder (New England) head the list I must make now of what can be eaten with fountaining acid up into my throat and, I think even my sinuses. The affliction focused my attention so whatever else might have happened today is background noise. In Cantaria we’re singing that Whitman song, the love song that I can’t get through if I think what it is about. Love is a vast lake in the forest of self, now. If in my travels I see it gleaming in the moonlight I veer a course away, not knowing if it can do me more harm, waste more of my time than it has, but thinking that it might. Yet someday I plan a night as the nights that were. not knowing whether bodies or ghosts will be there to meet me.

And when I thought how my friend, my lover,
was coming, then I was happy;
Each breath tasted sweeter—and
all that day my food nourished me
more—And the beautiful day passed well,
And the next came with equal joy—And with
the next, at evening, came my friend,
And that night, while all was still, I heard the
waters roll slowly continually up the shores
I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and
sands, as directed to me, whispering,
to congratulate me,—For the friend I
love lay sleeping by my side,
In the stillness his face was inclined towards me, while the moon's clear beams
shone, And his arm lay lightly over my
breast—And that night I was happy.

In a dream before morning, some horrible thing was lurking in the dark. I was paralyzed with fear, the way you are in dreams. It would neither come forward and finish me off, nor go away. Finally I said–surprising even myself– sing. I could tell in the darkness it was confused. But then it began to sing.

I have turned to my own way, hating all delays and reversals, thinking my anger justified if things do not go as I think they must to make the vision come to fullness. Defiant feet on their own little path, winding and winding through the wilderness. I don’t know how to get back. I don’t know which way home is. Sometimes I think I should just sit down, silently, and wait to be found.