two water

an invitation...

2011-04-03T15:58:00.003-06:00

Bajo,

I stack plates on the shelf. This way I know where to go when I need one.
Working with string in so many ways, I hear the noise it makes when moving now,
I have paid such close attention to its feature I can literally hear it change.
Yesterday Alysia said she likes rainy days, and today it is so. She has the gift.
I call her to help move rocks and she always does what I tell her,
I have to be careful. We used to do this right? Listen to each other. Meet at this place every once in a while to melt. I propose to you, lets come again.

Caridad

Responding

2009-10-06T08:18:00.003-06:00

Bajo,

His face on light and his hair long fast like I remember it. Hours of compliments and questions of how my heart responds to the saying of someones name. The repeating of someones loss. I do not remember some things, this is something I forget.
He asks where you are, what you do, and I think oh my god. I don't know. Where you are, what you do, if something is happening, where you get money and who you give it to, and of course why. This, I tell myself, justify, this I say is life. Things float in different directions. Perhaps this is correct, perhaps I am right. Never the less I am sad.
This little piece of land, my mothers mini paradise with a greenhouse on the porch that glows in the dark with green hangings, and clay pots overflowing with lavender. I want this and I have it. I have it for now. I see her husband in the morning taken so well to role of farmer. He feeds the chickens and ducks before he gets in his large red pick up truck to go to work. They flock to him and they love him even though he does not love them.
The children. They grow, like all of us, and they form into small pasts and traumas. They collect their patterns and put them on display. Because they have yet to encounter the necessity for shame in their imperfections. They understand they are just alive.
So I have arrived here to the comfort of my beginnings and I pet my dogs and I feed them well. I crawl out of bed in the morning trying to maintain a schedule, I make things with my hands, I hook and knot and I stack and paint and write, always. I collect old letters and he suggests responding to the emptiness that they have inside of them. This seems like a good idea, like a fine idea, and yet I cant imagine what I would say.
I tell myself not to fall in love with christian boys who can not speak well. I tell myself this does not make sense. I tell myself my lover is coming for me soon and I tell myself to be patient with my confusion. But then I hear myself saying things like I do not want this part, I do not desire, and I am a passionless woman as of recently, I hear my hands get achy, and I hear my legs still, they do not shake bent over sinks or tables or beds they do not bend at all. I am a paper box and am being choked by the weight of my analyzing. I am a paper box with writing on the sides that do not resemble anything of a practice. I do not do this, I lie, and I erase.

Caridad

two ways

2009-09-22T18:05:00.005-06:00

Being locked away. locked up. locked behind or before something happens. This is hard to imagine for you. The body so connected to islands and waters. No, you do not stand before any lock. I stand here now, and tomorrow, and for a while now to give these thoughts to the airs and they carry them through different temperatures until hopefully they reach you free, and perhaps with a man sitting at your bedside saying something like smiling because fifteen years seems like nothing now.

always moving. down south now and then over to the mountains. i have not had my things in over a year now. starting to make me wonder about materialism and how much i love my collections.

If it were, that, you gave a dam

2009-09-14T17:10:00.004-06:00

Dearest Cari,

They are trying to put me in jail. They are trying to get me deported. My language does not belong here, this, we know, we write about. Saturn is grinning at me. Last time he was in my bed, he said, see you in fifteen more years. Saturn is made of desires held from youth. I love the way he kisses me, and how that's what it is between us. Text.

-Bajo

Iron and Wine have a song like this...

2009-03-11T05:50:00.004-06:00

I spent most of the morning explaining my pilgrimage away from relating. Can a pilgrimage ever be away from, instead of towards, something holy? The truth is that I am trying to go towards something. Closeness. Nearness. Away. In session I figure in and out of resolutions, in and out of clarity. As if under the tide. Where are our fathers floating? Michelle Puckett has begun to blog, though timidly, about water. I think the ocean's influence is inescapable. Somehow the Mediterranean keeps getting dry. I keep re-filling it with my own mix; salt, water from the tap, words of encouragement. I am relieved to know that everyone is as confused about sex as I am. The Oedipal trumpets sound, the Electras of the world respond. How is it possible to live in archetypal mode? Are we all to partake in the narrative? What I am finding is more reasons to part with the narrative; as in away. As in from. Men, sex. Now that I have become (for the first time) the other woman, I have truly earned my title. The work begins like this. As a woman. But I choose, I choose everything from a simple gesture of "no" upon my body, in mouth, to awkwardly stepping into a bed, completely. Jezebel, now who was she? Is she really holy? I thought of Southern men and SoCo and felt that chivalry for the first time. The kind of voice, gesture, that undresses you despite your efforts to remain decent. He took me. We were across a counter, an interaction 24 seconds long. He took me because I am female, because he could. He drew a smile out of me and it might as well have been my nakedness, I mean it. Now that I have crossed the threshold of honest women and traded it for the hearth where women lead men to infidelity and secrecy, I am scared of what I can do with this body. So I decide to walk away with this sense of dejavu. Of having, certainly, had this dream.

poetry, hair-cuts, bricks: the fantastic old days.

2009-03-02T06:08:00.006-07:00

What is off, is the meaning
all the time over and over
the spending, where you go
to do this, i lay as well.

Should the time
bend, where i put
it then, show it
off, and give it off
send it off to this.

An entire day, for
nothing, all the time
spent drinking
steam and petals,
not schooled in all
the ways they can mix.

I call you in the
smoke, ask you
where to put them,
you say its here
in this box, where
you have already
done it.

StoryBooks

2009-02-12T18:56:00.005-07:00

Did it all start this way? Why some call things constant, others impermanent. Constant as the…which star? To not change can be taken in so many different ways. I tell myself.
Does it all start this way? Grudges, I can hold one in my hand for so long it becomes stone and I leave it somewhere in water to fester, and mold, to grow roots.
I wonder.
If like in a photo of the southern man, he drives off in a red pick up, blood in his teeth, silver and gold keys belling against the ignition. I know that sound, when his knee would hit the bottoms while he adjusted himself for the long ride back to the city.
If I like, I can do it all.
If I like, I can wonder if all the parts that never happened, the parts that stay on the tip of my fingers crying to be said, but can’t. Because, not yet. They aren’t there yet, for as much as I want them, they have not arrived to my grabbing, impatient little hands. I have stopped biting my fingernails for the thousandth time. I keep them a pale pink these days, the color is called “pinking of you”. I sneak off every week and spend $17 including tip to get them manicured, because if I pay for them sometimes that stops me from ruining them, sometimes. I sneak because the money should really be nestled away somewhere easily ignored for a “rainy day” or next months rent. But, really? What is seventeen to a thousand?

“Hey dad, can I have Twenty dollars?”
“Twenty dollahs! I just gave you Twenty dollahs last week! I swear you kids think I made uh money.”

I need to get my nails done. Babies with pierced ears, I take trips this way, one on my hip one in the sink and one hanging off a tree. I hide in the bathroom to cry because it scares him when I do in front of him. I miss my old house, my shell, and my bell down the hall to hold and take away.
It is likely I do it all. Out of boredom I write perfection, mine, and I live there letting the volume get very very loud around my ears, looking at photographs, and taking notes, holding my small hands around my face, feel blessed, feel blessed, I feel, I feel, sometimes, I try and feel blessed, I have only one mother but she is a mother eight times, and with all that practice she has become very good. Though I was only her second try, I am supposed to be the lucky one.
If likely, I feel it all. Before he left, I felt what it meant to not have one. Brother and sister who were left to cry to me about confusion, forgetting, and losing basics. Never beaten or mistaken for another’s, I felt what it meant to be stripped of everything in front of a lamp, blamed and blamed and blamed, and he was always blamed. To see men cry even as boys was at first unnerving, while now I am proud, I pat them on the back and am happy for their abilities.
I am forgetting now in the wall, where I put that one bit, which rocks held the important ones. I know it cant all start this way, that even if I choose this, I know there is something else out there I just have not seen. Its there.

2009-02-06T00:51:00.003-07:00

Are you on top?

2009-02-03T16:19:00.002-07:00

The Ocean Inside

2009-02-03T01:49:00.003-07:00

Somewhere there is a movie that is called something like that. It is a play on the Spanish expression "Deep at Sea". But it is the Sea inside. My mother speaks of this film. She almost cries when she does. She's has not recommended it to me, I think, because of my history. See "dress" or "a man called Trevor": see "bathroom" and "Lillian". See "broken", "bottles", "friendship". I have sent message to a young girl named Olympia (via her mother) about searching through the rubble of a shipwreck and what is found there. Perhaps Bhanu will be the recipient of the sea box. I'm making a sea-box with sand, salt, poetry and shells, glass, a fork. Is there anything I'm forgetting? Will you tell me? I think I found the perfect scarf to be the stand-in for water and I can replicate the smell of the sea by including some bones... from where? My own. I am a daughter of Yemaya.

puente

2009-01-30T17:11:00.005-07:00

For the thirsty, Bajo,

This is serious. I can not play for I do not permit it. I often do not understand, thought this morning I did something to a body. I told it to dance. Two boxes and a dress that arrived from Brooklyn, they belonged to tia Margarita. The things that live in women stay inside of her. And in water. I cut my tongue, this way i can longer have what responds to the furtures. This finished all that is punctuation and autograph.

I pretend i am Europe, eccentric and that who duels in the contemporary. Is it possible for this to be equal? That this language can be nothing as well as so much?

Everything is farce. Everything is architecture.

And this way everything thinks a designated space, all but this dialect alone knows to close doors, and doors, and doors. i will go to the carnival of hands, in the gardens behind you, captured. I will learn to read, and to think as is worthy. How to listen to Barthes and do what he says. Yes soak in the thing of this note. Yes, if i could find that bridge (on water) that responds to both water as they amble, like the knowledge of running has ceased. Two-water. Face is equivalent to hook, remember.

Your Beloved Caridad

¡Tienes Correo!

2009-01-23T02:34:00.005-07:00

Querida Caridad,

Esta carta es en serio. Ya no juego, no lo permito. Esta mañana me hacía burla un cuervo, aunque no lo entendia. Y digo que ya basta. ¿Dos trajes, que vestido? El que nos llegó de Brooklyn, que era de tía Margarita. Las cosas que andan las mujeres se quedan entre ellas. Y del agua. Me cortaré la lengua, así no tendre que responderle a los futuros. Así acabaré de errar en puntuación y ortografía. Pretendere que soy Europea, excentrica y que huelo a lo contemporaneo. ¿Sera posible que este equivocada? ¿Que este lenguaje no esconda-mucho o nada? Todo es farsa. Todo es aquitectura. Y asi todo crea un espacio designado, exepto este idioma-solo sabe cerrar puertas, tras puerta. Voy a arrancarcelo de las manos, a las garras duras de sus captores. Voy a aprender a leer, y a pensar como es digno. Porque escucho a Barthes y así es lo que dice. Si supieras lo entero de esta carta. Si pudiera encontrar aquel puente (sobre agua) de donde respeto ambas aguas como para dejarlas correr. Dos-agua. Mueca es equivalente a Garabato, recuerda.

Sedienta,

la Bajo.

Milan's Bookshop

2009-01-11T08:38:00.004-07:00

Milan’s Bookshop:

The shop was hidden enough inside the local walls of the city that we rarely got tourists. Occasionally one would come in, hoping the shop would suffice as their personal proof of their “really seeing” Prague. It was when they would ask where Kafka or Kundera was that would tip me off. Ah, the quintessential Czech writers. I’d lazily motion to the far right corner of the room from behind the counter where I stood browsing the Internet
The city had not yet been taken over by tourism, though it was slowly but surely spreading from Wenceslas square east to where I stood to work everyday. I dreaded the prospect and I prayed that I might be dead or too old to care when it happened.
It was February, and freezing of course. Having grown in the city I was used to the harsh winters, but that winter was especially bitter. One layer of clothing did nothing to hide from the icy air that year, two or three layers would just begin to create a protection, but mostly we all just tried to stay indoors as much as we could.
It was raining, the large window next to the entrance was wet with the water running down its glass, distorting the images of people and dogs as they walked by, making them look like mirages, only clear in certain sections of the glass. She was one of those distortions and when she came into the shop I could barely make her out. She was covered from head to toe, only her big dark eyes squinting out from her dark scarf.
She began to unravel. She moved the scarf down her face, off of her head, and it sat in a messy pile on her shoulders. She wore a grey hat underneath, and removed that as well. Her hair was black, cut dramatically around her face, with her bangs uncomfortably short. She grabbed the scarf at the fringes and pulled it off her shoulders in chunks. She shook the moisture off onto the ground before hanging it on the back of a chair that was at the table she chose. Her gray knitted hat lay on the table; it looked like something Joli would wear. Joli, can’t forget, I needed to go see her after work. The woman took off her long pea coat revealing more layers of cloth and sweater underneath it. Her gloves were red, a dark blood red, and for the first time I noticed so was her scarf that had been wrapped around her face. She removed the first sweater and put it on top of the large pile she had made of her garments.
She turned to look at the place for the first time, ready to see where she was. Her cheeks were flushed deep pink and she used her little hand to wipe away residual tears that were on her cheek. Had she been crying or was it from the cold? She didn’t look particularly happy, but she didn’t look particularly sad either. I scanned her body as discreetly as I knew how to, but she must have noticed. I was gawking, what was wrong with me? She wasn’t the first beautiful woman I had ever seen. She emptied her bag onto the table in more pieces. She placed a black notebook on the table and on top of that another smaller book, two pens, and a case for glasses.
She was finished unraveling and she walked up to the café counter to order a coffee from Marika. She poured honey into the hot cup and stirred it with one of the silver spoons. The steam surrounded her face as she took a small sip.
When she got closer, I made out more of her details. Her cheeks were still very pink from being outside. She walked into the bookstore area of the shop with the hot cup close to mouth; she held it with both hands as she eyed the rows of books.
She was in one sense petite, but in another she was very large. Her height and limbs were all small, short in length, she had very small hands, but her features did not match this body. Her eyes were big and round with a slight rise in the corners, her brows full reminding me of my mothers old post cards of Audrey Hepburn that she used to receive from her American friend, her cheek bones were high and covered by full and plump skin. Her mouth was wide hiding big pearls for teeth . Her skin was as white as most other Czech people in winter. She wore tight fitting jeans, which gave me full details of her wide thighs and round ass. I didn’t want to pay attention to this area, but I found it difficult, as I always would, to ignore those legs. She wore a sweater vest with a teddy bear sewn on the chest. Who was this woman? Was she five years old or twenty-five years old?
She looked to be the most innocent thing I’d ever seen but when I looked closer her nails were painted the darkest red which I was sure would look black from a distance, her eyes were lined with a thick black liquid streak, her nose sparkled in the light from the stud that went through the crease in her nose, and when she bent down to grab a long skinny book from the bottom shelf, a line of red lace peaked out from above her jeans. She was definitely a woman.
I snuck around the shelf where she stood with the cup to her face and the book propped up on the bookshelf so she could read with no hands. I slowly found my place a few feet to the side of her and grabbed a random book to hide behind to see what she was reading. Rozpitvání was written in large letters on the top of the page, an anatomy book. Interesting. A scientist? I wouldn’t have guessed it.
She looked up at me, probably wondering who I was and why I had been staring at her since the moment she walked in. I lowered the book, hoping the title wasn’t anything too embarrassing. I didn’t look at her, giving her a moment to make her opinion. When I figured she had enough time I met her sideways stare.
“Pocínovat JÁ pomoci tebe nález něco?”
She looked at me with nervous half smile.
“I’m sorry I don’t speak Czech.” She said with a sincere apology.
No. She was American? The heavy accent couldn’t be from any other country, but she looked European, she looked Czech, I thought to myself in a moment of denial. But, no, now that I had heard her speak I could see it. I thanked my dead mother for forcing me to learn English as a child. I translated for her.
“Can I help you find anything?”
“Oh, you work here. Um, no I’m just browsing, thank you.”

She was sweet. A slightly lower voice then seemed appropriate for her size, but I did find that it got higher at certain words. I wondered if after a while of listening to her I might find a pattern as to why that happened. She was an awkward balance of insecurity and confidence. Making direct eye contact, while biting her lower lip. Was she nervous? Did she find me attractive or did she want me to leave her alone? Was I freaking her out?
“Why are you reading Czech if you can not understand it?” Was that too rude?
She looked down with furrowed brows and quickly relaxed then when she saw the book she was reading.
“Oh no, just looking at the photos, I am in a figure drawing club with Pavla Dvorakova.”
I knew the name from my time at university when I studied photography. Pavla was a very well known artist. An Artist, that seemed more appropriate. She was overwhelmingly adorable, like something small I wanted to keep in my pocket, so I could protect her, and know exactly what she wanted at all times, so I could give her those things. But, when I caught a glimpse of her thighs again I knew there were things I wanted to do with her that wouldn’t be possible in my pocket.
She put the tall skinny book back in the wrong place on the shelf and brought the slightly less steaming cup of coffee to her mouth, keeping her eyes on me.
“My name is Sophia,” she reached out her right hand as she lowered the mug. I squeezed her small hand and I introduced myself, “Milan.”

“Like Kundera?” Jesus, she said Kundera. I should have left right then, should have politely said,
“If there is anything else I can do for you, I will be at the counter.” But I didn’t. Instead, I found her cliché comparison endearing. I even found myself somewhat impressed that she knew who Milan Kundera was.
I smiled.
“Yes, like Kundera.”

Here you look like Stein and at your best.

2008-12-26T20:00:00.009-07:00

Autumnal and just moments before a cigarettes. I never know the spelling of things...as if it matters! Your family is surrounding you right now. I recently found my paternal cousins and brothers and the sister I never met. Lou is not kidding when he says the ancestors speak loudly and that this is their doing. Today, a person you call by her middle name said that she is named...well...after her grandmother. I jumbled an explanation for my own naming at her. Somehow I hoped to have to defend my own nom de guerre but I haven't had to, except to me. She is leaving for London and I'm not sure that I will see her. I am not sure I will see you. Your brother is looking more and more like my brother. I cried when I saw Monte. My nephew is named Monte, the same as his father, the same as his grandfather and I wonder what kind of fate awaits him? I do not believe in naming "after". You named your new puppy not after Gertrude and I am thankful. Stein was too tragic for all of us. I wonder... I am acquiring an Ifa name. I wonder what it will be. Love, Caridad, on this December evening.

the dress

2008-11-10T14:06:00.002-07:00

4 november

alright, alright. Put your leggings on, fasten your garter belts and slip your arms through the straps, pinch your cheeks, slide the split cherry across your lips, and spread mud on your lashes. Slips are for the sensual, dresses for the altars, heels for the house, and pearls, the streets.

how many of us were there anyway? almost seven? yes, almost seven. Most from an island, some were landlocked, and oh the romance, the lines of the roads in between.

I will not focus because if I were to—all of the same would be looked over, all the skin and the fabric, all the hairs and wood. the materials leave smell, and smells—well we all describe those different, all have our own relationship there.

it is hanging in my closet—next to the T-shirts and slacks—aside the ties and work shirts. I can see my hand underneath it and smell Cuba, and Greenpoint on its nape—smell Colorado and Loveland on its waist line—I can taste whiskey and apples on its lace, I can see blue gods and jasmine, see sex and men, see finger nails and stages on its bodice, I can hear narrative and coffee brewing, suicide attempts, loss and competition, sisters and aunts, addicts and divorce on its gold thread.

and we all wear it, to and from the places we have to be. we cash it in when we are broke and buy it again for the weekend. we bring it home and hide it in the freezer, we cling to it in our sleep and remember its scent, like soil, like earth in its ruffles. we bite its corners, trying, trying out hardest to understand it through different senses, we taste it, and ingest it, and we tell ourselves it is special because of its cursive, because of its ability to speak with us when we are jealous or embarrassed, we, we need its golden guidance. Follow the stitching, and we do, hypnotized by its life, its stories and the way it leaves when it is no longer needed. The way it knows just how long to stay in order to avoid trauma and yet still learn in complete, total, and graceful vengeance.

But—really—I cant find it, not this time, not in the mountains, or in the kitchen, not the bed or the window sill, it is alluding me and this, well, this makes me hopeless, makes me tired.

So I begin again—the straps, belts, and the mud and cherries, I head to the city-center, go behind curtains in this shared fabric and photograph decisions.

Outfit and Outpatient

2008-10-23T15:14:00.001-06:00

As much as women can share is hanging in your closet. A dress, but inside of it, me. It's like this: One afternoon, a creature becomes pressed in her sweat and the day folds into her. It's close to six o'clock, an hour of walking. Of shape and the stories' shapes as they make their choices. Here on the bed, out of a bag. Red, no, pink, patent leather. "Now these are shoes!" The dresser has brought the clothing, the undressed is in need. A hotel room for a professor.
Pink, like your wedding sari, that afternoon. I newly met you, but now separated, your child held on. If a woman steps into the cold May is it rash? It was freezing, it seemed to have snowed. She laughs at the complication. The man on the porch is wide in bafflement. Neither of them children anymore, or adults. His knife is in the sink. What had she been thinking? Going down the steps now, she pulled her youth out of the house and stood it there, wearing a pair of worn converse and her freshly shaved legs.
The question is, how does one chose what to wear? To where? It is a matter of disclosure. And the nakedness? Honest trickster. Her undergarments are what hug the skin, what hold the secrets in place, what make the flesh more evident. Is total nudity a more complete nudity? There are things that we cannot see when we stand before everything. She risked more there on the sidewalk in her slip than if she'd been there stark naked. A combinacion her grandmother called it. The ancient piece united a skirt slip with a slip top all into one, soft as grey hair, night-prayers intended for God only. Her favorite pajamas were these old silken things a princess might wear. Embroidered trims always accompany sleep and remind her to cross herself. In the name of the father, the son, that we should cover our shame. This much her matriarchs had given her.
Women share clothing, like stories when they're in need. Hers becomes the other's for a while, and the stories in it also. She who agrees to wear it, adds her part, the fabric gathers, the narrative collects in the thread.
Police. Thinking, but upon review, decide that she was wearing something, after-all. Flesh colored. "Would you like a coat?" "It doesn't matter." "Where are your clothes?" She doesn't know where, wants to say this, forgot how to talk, forgot how a subject is important enough to speak about, isn't able to feel anything.
"I can't show my arms." There is no need to speak more, ritual is instinctive. If one voices reservations about her shape, the other must look at her own in kinship. The dresser tells herself, "Remember that part of the your body, scarred, which you hide? This is like that." It suffices to to explain.
It's dark in the bathroom, but her choices become clearer. With the lights off you can hear every ancestor who's come to say: you're on your own. But when the knife is borrowed, the owner is also there with you. The knife's thirst and your body's own will to stop are there. Off, the coat, the boots, off, the leggings, panties, bra, off, socks, hair-ties off. If there'd been scissors there, this might have ended with a few black sprigs of hair on the linoleum. Only an old pocket knife leads the way: this is going to take a while. Will, the proud, invincible Will, makes an appearance. It is she who defines the edges of our minds, of our fabric. The fates are nothing without her. What can those weavers do, she's taking the knife to it?
"Here I brought you a couple different options." "I don't have anything to wear, and the reading starts in ten minutes, thank you. I'm reading from something I'm working on, I'm not sure about this part. Would you read it and tell me if it's boring?"
Someone shuffles papers. The knife failed or maybe the courage did. It cut deep, but was impossible, no vein, nothing spilling to the floor. So another try, with the razor this time. It is sealed in the safety of plastic, dammit, open it, break it open. She hopes for peace wherever she's going, but instead is given pills, stitches, shrinks. Papers.
"And this, I brought this because the dress is a little see-through." "I haven't worn one of these since I was little." "I know, but I I love slips, this one is my favorite." "I wear this when I write," she wants to say, "I wore this to what I thought would be my end," But the woman is already in the bathroom, putting it on. It takes a minute but as the fabric settles and clings to her, an odd feeling. Somehow the other woman looks in the mirror and already knows she wanted her to know.
Sometimes womanhood precedes being human, it is the sturdy wall when you're dizzy, flailing. "Let me do one thing for myself" she says. Tries to restore dignity. "Could I shave my legs, please?" The nurse simplay hands her a Bic disposable razor, as if to say, "Do you, or don't you?" In a wing of the hospital reserved for souls dismantled, at the end of the hall, a suicidal youth lays in a heap of chronicled choices, in flannel scrubs sobbing and muttering, "These are not my clothes."

Summer wont want it

2007-05-08T16:58:00.000-06:00

The Triplet

2007-04-28T12:28:00.000-06:00

28 April 2007
Bajo y Cari,

You may already be aware of this, but you are slipping. There is something happening with in the project that needs a tool, something phallic.

It was only five nights ago if you two remember that a permission was granted, and now after so long. I have returned because a messenger was sent, telling me you two have not been finishing your homework, a blank box the messenger said. My loves, there is no time left for boxes, none for a wandering from goal to goal, none for one or two, I have come to form the triplet.

First I must address you both separately:

Cari,

Your mother has been telling me of your dreams, hands on a bench, close to being deadened by hopeful shelving. She says you have not been wearing well made shoes, and that your bread baker has been at the shop more often than in your bed. I understand the attachment to woodwork, and the baker’s option of coupling. You are weakening, you are dieing if you continue this. She knows better than I, for she shares your head at night, and I merely can make language to it. But I do know this, woman, you will not be able to sing this much forever, there is a limit to your talent, there is a point in which your occasional silence will permeate, and people do not like silent people all that much. It inspires suspicion of pretension, mystery; no one likes a mystery for too long. Oh Cari, I know this is all useless, you will be this shelled forever, this young and attempting thing, you will be convinced of this tool your mother spoke of, but my lovely, no one is coming, and you stupidly, selfishly gave Stein away to a rich white family with no intention of visiting. Perhaps this will all change when your shame truly sets in.

Bajo,

Your shoes are fine, your collective and transmition. Last night when I told you that you were beautiful, I did not merely say that so you would calm down. I said it so you would stop yelling, so you might stop and swallow, stop and shuck your intentions. That man’s beer deserved to be thrown. I have been asking the mountains to collaborate with me on this one, since it does seem so hard for you to get to them, that one there, perhaps the one with the snow still atop. Help me find my way back in, love, for the beaches are far from here, and I know that ultimately I can not bring those sands to you, and the sweater on them, he is too far from here for now. Cari and I have spoken to the possibility of teaching you how to drive, and the prospect is exciting. You plus wheels equals only unimaginably romantic impulsive road trips, a ring around the moon when you reach the Western Coast, a compilation of the triplet sing songey in your attempt to reach a goal while calling it another point of commencement, of initiation.

As a man I will say this and only this when it comes to my hands they do not belong to either of you, though as the permission holds, I allow you both to use them as tools, phallic or otherwise, I will advise them to abide.

Love,

Mano

copious the ways of bricklaying, edifice, or a casual night of speaking acts

2007-04-02T17:50:00.000-06:00

5 March 2007

Dearest Caridad,

What. It is. You write with(out ) space(room ). Or: the feet, that are 'there', of which you write: write (with) them. One should defend oneself against existence. Masochistic. A I am sure you have: a statue that must be, a bowl of pleasure (the good things in life, fresh) in your petrified shape, through the turning of whether. Climate.

Gauge. The way language… Move. As though changeable: speak. Sorely. In a damp palate, have a need, the same as fruit. Succumb. Say, lots about the novelty, about the various question that can arise. They do. As: who? As "being". Pronouns(oz.) as they do: he/she/he/she/she/he. She architects, absolutely. To say (or else imply) (sigh*). A roundness of associations. An approaching to foundation: meaning (we are here): to cathect means;/: methods. (We know our hand will. Never be the wall.) Pressing for words. Exactitude. Yet we come, infinitesimally smaller, closer, (in lovemaking) against a surface. Wreck, a phone rings at 8:00 am, in loss of that which language bends. Pinches in all the right spaces. Whose room? Come in, please, and put the image down, please know each phoneme as your own, as you have, raise it (erect) in me, a flesh/"mot" mortar that slips at an angle. Splits into the space, corridor, cement, copulation. The bridge, an instep has built a post-structuralist water (beneath).

Pressed, beso.

1.outside, of, no
2.nothing left to mention, in language
3.life. To follow (pathologically) a desire, can bring dismemberment and envy.To
say this with my own two lips, tongue, my own clicking, pushing of audible things out, spitting them out as into, life. He/She. Carving them into usage. Like brilliance, we refract, through threads of words, not needing surgical removal.What are you saying? Amounts to… To sound, as into make, speech. Do I? Him? Sign(ed)? Roundness is implied, here, ridiculous as a kiss, alivened.
4.(Bajo)

.

things in the mouth, it is march.

2007-03-02T22:01:00.000-07:00

2 March 2007

Bajo,

With them, I have been holding the hand of them, these things. Writing, and structures of “language” that at one time were solid, full of permanent seclusion. There is an enlightening quality to the story of books, though with every marble of knowledge a section of me wishes to turn back, to clothe myself in the lightness/heaviness whatever it was that he concluded was worse. Might there ever be an author who can include awareness for every social politic and still be grace and juice, and I mean with form as well, I mean to contain accessibility while, being…well you know the rest.

In the mouth, the things in the mouth, there is a good one, so good. Here, good one, I have been on the phone often, advantages to distance, and pain to distance. Bridges and rain on another end, visits and children, I don’t want to have children on bridges. Often, have you understood yet the collection of silently entering home’s. I fear I will only ever enter silent when love waits, carpets moving, windows waking, I don’t ever change calendars, something is good, tell me to be good, a good one.

Against my better judgment, I title, even somewhat comfortable quicker labels. Its been two plus two equals four divided by two equals two, this is three two’s, I indulge in simple math to remember dates, simply.

I will not be buried here, deciding a highway to scatter, a cliff to call a nest, of course you have heard of Isabel’s Hawks, and the division necessary for all of her children. She says simply foretelling words, and I am an attack of panic on Pearl Street, powers of mothers who tell their daughter they soon will be as well. Tell me to be good, a good one, repeat, don’t repeat. What will I write now that there are significantly less questions, the ones left not desperately needing answers, merely the questioning questions that I know are purely the disease crawling into my steamboat, telling me to not watch the water roll on off the round with too much sentimentality.

So to the one that waits and thinks nothing there, to the empty collision in the inside, good one, there is a good one, to the good one choosing is the collision, and while amateur I wish to assign a color season sense body part to all work, a lens if you, good one, could lower yourself to name it so. Titles can be entertaining, they can hold the sliver of memories, the ones on the tip of whatever it was you felt in the moment of recollection, the tip we good ones call it, brain or tongue, the things in the mouth collecting in a “good” taste, remember this title in simple math, my very very good one.

-Caridad

tropic of venus

2007-02-20T13:54:00.000-07:00

14 February 2007

Caridad,

Wherever you look a face will be printed in tension. Aligned ropes on which hang: doubts, reservations, terror, comical anecdotes. These are all useful on the side of friendly contention. I have come to terms with the fact that I have done horrible things which you would not approve of, and somewhere ran into my innocence, my dignity, but I have never complained. The bitter the truth is, the more substance: that I would, if I could arrange something, as far as men are concerned, and some others, answer. I refuse to engage in speeches on the subject.

Tools inevitably pile in an insatiable act of marking the height of where we've been. The skeletal also marks its way, or anyone else's. They would ask if I own one. I won't meddle. As hard as it may be, there is no protective argument, you understand?
Violation wraps itself around the text: thought. Glass makes an impression: the visceral, the rawness seems to have fallen and slipped, a little. Concentrate on the excursion, but don't disturb me, I ferment in isolation. Hardly. I have developed a therapeutic alliance. Mason stares, yours, as he is, we realize that there is nothing to kill: no end by our hands. But gripping tightly, vocally, obscuring the reasons, scraping and finally hiding. Cowardice is my resort; I must hold it, in order to spare everyone else: room to breathe.

I understand what you mean, your lies are tender: you call your lover by a secret name in order to conceal a force: instability is marked by a profound shade of green. I don't "own" anyone. Only watching brings me joy. I tend to love surfaces: to love to want and most of all to flee. When in search of feelings, my frostbite has no end. No one likes it when my face emerges saying that THEY are not, nor HIM, but over. Language backstabs us: malice, deep seeded. Procure myself a heart, not let boredom set in. But most of all: I don't want to talk, I'm sick of my answers. Do I chase their heels through several volumes of memory? No. There is not a pronoun needed. The "he" (plural) I acquire accidentally and not by looking. I'll find another subject matter that is cruel and delicate and tell him to lie down, who listens when I ask "Can we talk about it later?" Soon the desire will be lost and our hands will be empty: I will dine on our disappointment.

-Bajo.

Lourdes has been found

2007-02-13T00:30:00.000-07:00

13 February 2007

bajo,

This here, is where I thought I might find him all the while, Noah. In films, the streets they are filmed on, a woman combing her hair long to the ground. Is it permitted to hold an obsession tightly for life, go to it for inspiration, motivation, for pain when emotions have left you, for a reminder that dysfunction once was the truest form of assisting the thrust? This is a question only because I am not yet able to state it, though I do not require an answer, in letters, I still know every inch of his standing, every selection of his play.

He tells me to screen her, investigate the similarity, what part there was his definition, what lace did he tie me with? I have been, as you’ve said, thirsty.

This reminds me, the drawings have been done, the maps for a boat.

-Caridad

our lady of definitions

2007-02-13T00:05:00.000-07:00

8 February 2007

Caridad,

Since the last time I saw you, you've grown with natural catastrophes.

Peculiar as it might be, I wear the thong assigned. To deliberately announce this: becareful when wrapping the eletrical tape (wire) around your neck, you might need assistance. Three in the morning will let us, see better. A connection is only analog; we will get disconnected, lost between mail offices, tossed in the Bardo.

To be terrified is ultimately sexy. To scraggle your voice "Hello" and ring me into motherhood, I, who am lack in lactation. I warn you subtle: do not take on what is intended for me: take my cigarette butt out of your mouth!
Splicing this with that body part will not make you a cyborg, so lay down and ask for water, you're thirsty.

Mason (since we address him, now) is one of your figures. I've never been comfortable with numbers, not fluent in the language. Posibilidad, lo es. "To strange" as to endow a verb, a subject, is to appropiately write "him".

How you look at buildings is unnerving, what matters is that we've lived "there" and so have they. . . but you gaze, so. . .

Irigaray talks. We who sin, lack, aggressively. We are falling apart. Carcasses. So lets dance! The silent people are not caged, they're perfecting supplements. Let me dabble without making a sound… Let me take it all off, slowly, narratively. To encompass you would require innertia, nothing like this exists, as we know it. To follow him, drink him requires:

1. To birth him
2. The irreversible trek toward a love of women
3. Being both blade and sheath

My house is populated by red lighting, individually assuming their positions on me. We are all blood, she says, and eventually bones.
You've read this mythology aloud to me at bedtime. I grow everywhere, unhinged, maniacally. I am carcinogenous, sudsy, your antagonistic memory. I'm entombment, but most of all, the cessation of rain.

We will flood this summer, in an absence of language, like in the past hundred years.

-Bajo, (bajito, mas, shhh).

The removal and examination of a sample of tissue from a living body

2007-02-13T00:03:00.000-07:00

8 February 2007

Bajo,

There are a quaint few that have interacted with these possibilities;
a voice over a phone concerned though, because of male oppression
unable to hear, only worry. More of a weight one might say, so I
attempt the explanation of fear and my own concern, the Mason simply
says he cannot go into detail, for what he has seen is horrific. Some
believe that when one is in pain you show them that you have been in
equal or worse pain, believe this will somehow assist. I am beyond the
point of perspective. There is no one else that can live in the eyes
of others better than I, unfortunately, for this is a gift I would
willingly bestow to anyone willing to receive. But as the Mason I
allow him to think he is serving, for the reality is he must believe
this in order for me to keep a father.

How old could I have been to reverse this? Five? Fifteen? Perhaps when
I lived on the beach, or in the city, or in the forest, or the
highway, the mountains, the gothic structures? There might have been a
chance had I seen the possibility of possession, the reality that some
people are not good all the time, more, some people are wrong and
diseased, and some people do not make sounds for the rest to hear
them. I have recently wondered what of the structure of nature or
culture has seeped into me these years while I have been gross with
distraction, disgusting in the contradiction of deed. I lied last week
and said the importance of the most important was not wanted any
longer, and this morning while late for class on pleasure and desire I
saw the little one on a balcony, fitting gloves over smaller yet hands
and I understood the severity. This is when my human will gain, the
top white notch, and I will patch myself to the tape and to the burn,
and finally to the electrical. I have made choices of laughter my
entire life, some say contagious, some say invasive, and I say now
that I no longer can laugh at myself, nothing about this is funny,
nothing, nothing, black.

P.S. I do not leave the blood for you love, how we seek each other is
nothing of this.

Caridad

pommes, hearts

2007-02-13T00:02:00.000-07:00

2 February 2007

Dearest Caridad,

For those, women without shame, a thing, or two, would be useful (if remembered): there is a point in which (you are right) there is no ground and we are flung against the void.

Can you answer the question: what is a man? If he in in the center, is fibrous and small, then we shall drink tonight. If not, God help him!

The nocturnal position, the position of leverage defies naming, because initially we have been taught to. That "love" has a density (mass) means it is buoyant: it will float in salt-water. To laugh at the self is the biggest of all choices.

I cannot enter the house so I've started at the top, mallet in hand, the chains are long enough. This is her (when she is) witholding.

It could be because they are prone to bleeding and drowning. Morse code is expecting too much but at any moment (daughters and all) they might die: we, on the other hand experience the complications.

Sleep is uncanny, its ways: reocurring.

P.S.

There is enough flesh and fat on the snow for the lot of them. We who learn, cut off our hair and pretend to not know. Nothing, nothing, black.

P.S. 2

You called to adhere, I didn't respond so startled. We are not curious, but capable although we do not care. Death is an enchantment, so lovely warm, cervix speaking. Why leave your blood on the snow? I would know where to find you.

-Bajo.

Solopsism: the theory that the self is the only thing that can be

2007-02-13T00:01:00.000-07:00

25 January 2007

My good Bajo,

The self is the only reality. Can you recall Gabriel's
death-suicide-what ever it is one would call it- This one, a lover, a
son, he was perfection in the way my Alysia's humor is. But, like all
the good ones, he didn't want the daughter-Bajo do you think men can
experience postpartum-

Long Beach, Island Park, Long Island, New York-it was winter like
always with Gabriel, he let the waves take little Hannah, only a week
old and I was at my mothers on Eagle St., Greenpoint, Manzanitia was
trying to tell me, but she could only tell me if I stepped out onto
the stoop, I was too cold, eating platanos wondering when my lover and
daughter would be home. Do men experience postpartum- mine do.

The LIRR- this is where the funeral was and so many people experience
their memories there; write their masterpieces on those seats-meet
their soul mates. If I had known Bajo-that Hannah was colder than I
would ever be on a stoop with grandmother, great, I would have stepped
outside. Always listen to Manzanitia, always adhere.

Still I believe he had no idea, that death is irreversible, the
audacity of insanity is impressive in that we dream beautiful
Himalayan landscapes where our good Xiao hold's Hannah like a
goddaughter while Gabriel is the one falling-there is no wrong doing
when a mother trusts a father, I just trusted the wrong one.

The Burberry is real and sliding on the ice-I will give you these
words forever Bajo, and I still thank Noah everyday. If only we could
be five, ten, and fifteen together and at the same time.

Apologies for walking everywhere, there is a stain in the street.

-Caridad

naked, you are as a fruit, halved, severed, opened

2007-02-13T00:00:00.000-07:00

20 January 2007

Caridad,

The audacity we show is irreversible: the physiology of people is not something to play with. Regarding reverence I say this: a woman shall have it (from a son, the answer to much rattle in the thoraxic box).

Things will break: there, one motion, a body-like taste. Sacks of salty water. Despite music, I am dry, my palate fixated. Stuck in __________. To walk in his shoes. To hold the face, coiled in one hand, one evening. Ask forgiveness. I never meant to: these things are not written. Not supple. As for pedestrians we will say: "Share us in El Camino de Santiago".

We will, incestuously, return.

Apples and Bells: I have no shields to abhor them.

Faith and Anxiety become the same. Share a code, a context. I am not to speak, so take me here, have your way with me. In this message a woman is waiting for me, she pays no attention to how I squander my (paper is mostly a) historical credibility. They paid the Second World War with their breeding, stoicism, lucrative forms, revelling.

Like her, I wait, for you, here. There are no reasons to debate the state of disrobing. A simple "enough" will do away with committing a crime, on the doorstep. Finale.

I roll around on the floor for her, always have, and lay there, waiting.
--> -->

"You're human," she says, "like it or not!"

Like it or not. With hopes, we will make a space and shall be entered (body unobscured, non-body, Buddhism, etc.). They will enter (through) the principal door, sit stage left, exeunt. Derrida will be heard: as to thread, to examine, blush. I can hardly remember, so THEY should pay to the crossroads, what is due there, copper, and each of them (blinking). I can spell the same, "in sections, in squares" here. Not for fear of you, intimately. I am petrified.

Today a darker gray sets in around my eyes and I'm reminded of an insistence on my tongue: to speak like my mother, ill-fitted, blasphemous. The poverty of men makes me wonder, pitty God's condition. Let's buy him a drink, Caridad, lets go in a 'menage-a-trois' with the poor bastard, let's show him the possibility of desire/satiety.

Bajo.

The meetings of Harry Haller have begun.

2007-02-12T23:58:00.000-07:00

13 January 2007

Bajo,

What is below has been celebrated, respected for years in privacy.
Allow the darkness to supply nutrition; we are all more in the
darkness.

Today there was much time spent on transportation systems, speeches of
what one might do with an endless supply of paper. All I could think
of was buying my father a world trip ticket; destinations to be filled
out at ones own convenience, that is when he has decided where he
might want to have his last child. And, of course hiring a team to
surgically install a horn into the crown of a very large black horse,
attentive to the goal of doing it as painlessly as possible, this for
Alysia so she can grow up believing in unicorns. Perhaps on her tenth
birthday figure out a way to make it a Pegasus.

When later I was walking, unprepared for this horrid and frustrating
cold: my face stung, I met with a man who speaks so kindly, speaks
with his tongue, as if a baby was in there. Can you see it (bite my
lip). Though as you predicted there was no concentration, no interest
in listing reasons for doing or not doing. There was only a hope of
entry, a colliding of intellect and my stupid little hands that have
been hurting a lot recently to merely accomplish it, to finish it, and
burn this fabric: wrong choice in skin to yearn for. There will be no
more talk of recollection, most men leave pennies on the train tracks
for this sort of photography, we on the other hand take pictures of
each others lovers in snow, in sections, in squares, and then with
mistake and accident, perhaps subconscious intention overdevelop the
film so Xiao is only pink spots on wet plastic. I apologize to myself
for it.

-Cari

bad apple

2007-02-12T23:56:00.000-07:00

12 January 2007

Caridad,

Horrors of night can easily become bondage that alongates our hands in order to reach. A melodic terror will stop us from parting. Petal might occur, so as to disregard things: ovums know to make their return as THEY do.

I would (Shakespearean) that intravenous ink ran instead, the stale burgundy, satin. I have it out for her: fang and claw.

With woe:
Rivers have been ill, stocked properly so now they sustain many a line. Unlucky enough, I guess.

At the table I actually said, "Your eyes look like grates." Speaking in a matter of deeper saying. I did not know. Cast iron, metal, train tracks. I should never wake up the same, stand all the same, as tomorrow, as after. A baby falls asleep, becomes grayed with neglect and all I think about is that woman wearing red, her hair, the fabric falling softly on that curve. I desire methods of incomprehension and lies. She kisses like a fucking poem (bite my lip).

Funny you should ask about the strongest structure: one sits on my lap, interrogating. Having failed to give fully I slander passerbys and make war on the sidewalk. I say (meet bricks and mortar) that closure cannot happen, exept maybe on that bridge. "The Charles," my mother says, "has been there for 700 years."

Most men will rise if the wind rattles: oak, anxious, cushion, feeling despair. Afraid of the wrong choice, they tap around without a map.

Chase a brighter line and do not be bothered to respond. She drags me out on walks to nowhere. I follow revelling in her tangled hair when I find ridicule and taunts in order to remind me of my place (Bajo). Low. On the bottom.

"You're an empty shell..." we say for eachother. I cannot go back. I am here and gripped. No skin do I yearn for, no phisicality. There is no satisfaction. Only hunger is comparable. A fool with infinity in my bags. Do you mind if I spend the night? My crass disregard: all are discarded. All shades work interchangeably.

I can't recall any of their names sometimes: a field of bodies.

Bajo (el peso del ser). Trs. Under the weight of being. K.

P.S. I cannot wear anything but grey. Too much resolution. My collection is not black or white. I dress in a love affair of "film noir". I promise (as so often) not to buy a pistol . . . though I do not choose this, I conceed.

"You want to buy a gun?" he asks surprised.
"I really, really do" I say grinning
"That's cool, like a shotgun?" Now, sympathizing.
"No, like a handgun," I correct him.
"I've got a shotgun because I have mountain lions in my yard," informingly.

The mountain lions are in my head.

Prostitute oneself: debase oneself.

2007-02-12T23:55:00.000-07:00

8 January 2007

My Good Bajo,

I will now spend the majority of my time proving to you how well you
play in pairs.

Bajo, this is all the account. I have been asking myself lately if I
would write as much as I do if I did not worship the longhand, if I
did not devote myself to cursive, the visual of letters and ink. My
font is different now than when you first met me, the triangles?how do
you feel about that?

The wind recently is clutter?these things sneaking into a crack in the
window, couldn't close it because these things were thirsty faces
everywhere and I suppose I do not trust Noah and/or Caridad to protect
me from their anger of being locked out.

You see, if you had not been there my nightmares might have hurt me.
I, following you down stairs, swinging porch swing in a very large
blanket. You can clear it.

I dreamt about sitting with the devil on the Charles, he threatens me
and eats a beautiful little Czech girl. No permission he says to love
another, with her skin on his mouth, he counts every grimace and hands
me coffee (no sugar) as persuasion to stay? you see he is misinformed
of environment, for you are sleeping heavy next to me (because you are
homeless) and that you and I are stronger in number, a pair.

When I wake on the floor you are a face bloom in the morning,
potential for rose petals in the bath. The thirsty faces. Invisible in
the daylight, though you being the more fear able of our pairness,
they very well might be visible to you. Can we call these the mornings
of Scarborough, she sleeps slightly and when half waking reads my
mind. She makes it easy with sparkles in the air above the wood floors
to fall in love with a populated solitude.

Bajo there has been a reunion; I am a bag of bones and laughter. No
indulgence in the memory maker, 4:51 says give space to options

-go out to eat with them
-be nervous with them
-talk in corners with them
-write to them

But these cannot all be extremities?this is the weekend life, the
plush reality of the burn of sun in the morning, you wear gray and I
am little dressed in comparison to your layers.

-Cari

appleseed

2007-02-12T23:49:00.000-07:00

7 January 2007

Caridad,

We begin the work of extremities. How hunger sits obstinate. A mouth won't suffice to mention. Count these grimaces. Words said voluntarily or other. In order to describe his body: stalks. A conclusion. Call my bluff if you want to. But to say "innefable" of my life. My sleep is heavy. I don't notice anyone coming, or going. Perhaps even all my activities go unknown, unquestioned. Whatever you are told, assume more.

Your hands have not the size, responsible for a face blooming. Jimmy Joyce was not afraid to call it a petal in the bath. Don't ask questions that disturb a dysmorphic. What else can be told? I'm not good as part of a pair. There are no off-springs/ heirlooms. The window is opened daily in absolute isolation. This is the way my face is. Thirsty. It has been different long ago.

Two of them cornered. I am not part of a pair. My father is mean drunk, but there are small gestures which are never enough; and small words. A shape arrives on the glass and I promise you that I observe this. To speak of you: something amazing. As I lay against spilt beer: I care not about nudity. Only for you to read: give me bones and laughter, everything else is wallpaper.

-Bajo.

I groped through my pockets. Not a single apple, no pocket knife, I

2007-02-12T23:46:00.000-07:00

4 January 2007

Bajo,

Perhaps leaving my luggage at the airport was impulsive, but you
napping through midnight is unforgivable. I might have been later had
the bus driver not liked sour patch kids, and I was not as motivated
to start it here.

It is the productive aspect of us that does not embody the "stance".
We want this in so far as we can control it. Let us not be the
projects we so ridiculously desire, though I believe product is not
what we will end with anyway.

I want you to recall the night you fell in the snow, the walk to an
introduction of where you would spend some time out of boredom. My
walk in someone's tight grip, a man is lost, in search of an address.
Detached interest in a loft, for my focus remained at the bar.

Recall the morning Bajo, messed and unchanged. Both in separate early
morning paths, your hat different than mine. This morning is important
because both my focus and yours arrived, they came to us. The
intention was to complete what was done.

My brother will return today and I fear the tension will remain for
sometime, unfairly and misdirected because it is our mother who I
desire a distance from. I must remember that regardless of her
opinion, in this family "there is no alliance, for there is no war."
But as you know it is hard to convince a Cuban mother of this, when a
mother is all she's ever been, even before the birthday.

She demands agreement, demands definition, demands we be a team
undefeated. I don't want to play with her anymore, and I have never
spoken to my mother with so much vocabulary, so much volume, and still
she attempts a hug, and I feel thirteen walking into an airport.

So I, naturally, and somewhat forcefully ask The Mason to assist me in
building a perfect wall, when she doesn't realize that space is more
than a moment and I make plans with to do lists to spend next December
in my very small apartment, reading, writing to Noah, walking to the
mountains with you and creating scenario's to speak to myself in, I
should have always been an actress Magara thinks.

Classes have yet to commence though I can already taste these streets
with out him, and everything is perfection in the absence: fearless
entrances, early morning wakings to my library, yoga on the porch
(while the neighbor is away), sitting while broccoli steams, tea and
my red ukulele, breakfast and music in a backpack while walks to the
woods with my camera can be accomplished before the sun rises, for
there is no one keeping me in bed, no one to keep me up late.

How was that tight of grip permitted, that kind of direction from
someone who could have died any morning he woke, if it were not for
distraction, I might have been following a ghost all that time.

So, eat more apples she says, and take notice of the poison potential,
but do not fear it she says. Then she gives me a white goldl ring with
a pearl on it, this is the most beautiful gift I have ever received in
a dream and she keeps handing me delicious reds and in contrast to the
pearl their red is darker, like a burgundy. So eat more apples she
says and do not put so much sugar in your coffee? somehow she has
learned how to speak English since she has died, but I still cannot
write her letters in Spanish.

Bajo, when it is you come with me to Greenpoint, I will show you where
she hid the water, and where she chalked the stoops with me.

-Cari

Of many things that can be said about boxes, ice, glances and the absurdity that calls itself a

2007-02-12T23:41:00.000-07:00

30 December 2006

Caridad,

Though charity is involved, we find a difficulty in giving. We fish for words to reflect desperately: a shifting gaze pondering the impossibility of "stance". Let us fight the words until the inner tissues remind us that blood is made of iron. Let us rob the streets of any smile and courtesy. Let the faint desires of hours wasted come alive with the regret of not having lived. I've never stolen a kiss. We do not want in what is given: it cannot satisfy us. Nothing shall be given, only taken and this day is meant to be.

Kicking: I'd rather curse at you than offer a flower, I rather you drown in weeping than think this "ordinary". I shall make it mine when you're not looking.

The door opens and the monologue resumes.

You have carried every inch of me down the stairs. Onto snow we pile up with dictionaries flailing discussing what of Kierkegaard or intimidation by knowledge and arrive at architects or Mason. Even freezers cannot keep this concealed for thirty years. Death is no motivation, only "stance".

A day like most days.

Tina sits with her back toward the morning birds, in the very earliest of grays she thinks and wishes not to. Shadows seem too compromising a subject for observation, aesthetically and so she goes on. Trains! Voyage, wheels, iron, songs, whiskey by the window. A plaid man in his fifties alights an incoherence- the melting with the wave of warm substance now rising in him. Ramble. Nothing is read here, no scriptures, there is more said about what isn't the case. Except for a moment, hallucinated maybe, in which she stares. He looks. An icicle tests its gravitation potential, drips away its life in the sheet of light. "I miss m' Momma's Momma…"

Completion is a nice distraction, a story heard once tucked in bed. There is work to be done, Mason. A wall shall be here and it shall be transparent. Made of minutes stacked on one another: we will still be able to say "Hello". I should still hold your small arm up by wishing and you touch them: there they are our poor efforts.

- Bajo.

I am #1 Mom

2007-02-12T23:39:00.000-07:00

29 December 2006

Bajo,

Over a week now since I have picked up a cigarette. A checking in on
cervical cancer, some say I might be a good mother, and if I don't
carry how will you to the next generation? Besides of course your
Gabriella.

Relieved to know how serious you take these spaces, remember. The same
sum do not respect this form; do not know the politics in punctuation.
The politics of a birth or in your supposed case, and my potential
future (if I do not stop eating wheat and frequenting the downer,
searching skill). The vacant center will be our inevitable result.

Sometimes brick work is most comforting. My father was a mason the
moment he woke and Rose this year helped me create a family apple tree
and after her seventh mini bud light she admitted the resentful
portions of her marriage to the first Thomas: the one who succeeded in
death, 2 left.

Isaiah is generous with his kisses at such a young age, no teacher, no
directions, he only gives, his smile full body. He asked about you
this morning in his curls and dirty finger nails. How are my siblings
already surpassing us in wisdom? They all ignore their reflections.

I realize I have neglected your family in favors. Patricia never
received a phone call from me on Praha. I would only be able to give
her Salmovska and Stepanska, Jolie and Jasmina in books, in loft, and
of course the hidden living room behind the castle where the coldest
day of my life, fogged and unforgiving gave me some paper. The
hallucinations of the city I might have warned her of, though I fear
she won't encounter this side, and I know that I could never translate
this to Spanish with honest eloquence.

The blue wall bajo, before the washer and dryer, the kids like to sit on.

-Cari

Eve, you've eaten.

2007-02-12T23:37:00.000-07:00

29 December 2006

I can imagine Alicia, Patricia and Isabel. Lately it is Tina, Gabriela and myself. How are the spaces remembered?

Dearest Apple of My Eye,

Today I can see and the fact that it is a man that I see has no bearing on my expression. I have become comical as most good things worth laughing at. I've been bloodied, oftentimes, your suspension has come to mean "being" and not "of", nor "in" itself.

- Your Other.

By a birth I can't become. What of your motherhood and my children? Barren as I am, and the verb "to mother". As one does a child, "babying", then "mothering" is the child's response. I will render myself "mother" in order that I come to terms with my vacant center.

You will be asked to Take Off Your Hat and I will gladly read and gladly publish and divulge to as many Oya as possible.

The persuit of a demon and a philosopher seems hindering. A path is not carved, a manual is not given. Let them allow themselves while I continue to make this a more phisical reality. Death does not wait. It laughs though I take her seriously.

-Bajo.

La Manzana

2007-02-12T23:32:00.000-07:00

28 December 2006

Bajo,

My mother has decided that not one more Christmas will pass with you
absent. She thinks unit K must be sad, I have informed her of your
impeccable ability to find new and interesting things to do to pass
the time until l return.
Firstly, Take Off Your Hat is completed, this was done somehow in
Jersey and then on a Carolina day my mother sat on Alysia's pink
ruffled bed and read it in full. Its skeleton has gotten smaller but
still it is sometimes too full for me to believe it could have ever
been completed. Imagine the five things that Patricia would be most
disappointed in you for, collect them all and place them in "fiction"
then give it to her. All of it on Alysia's pink.
Bajo, we have frequented indecent places, this might be the time when
we continue walking into relationships with addicts, stupid people,
and the unavailable youth. But with your philosopher and my demon gone
to the other coast, gone over seas we might as well allow the assumed
positions of master and servant to make more sense.
La manzana wishes you would receive the bell mama.

-Cari