Responding

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

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

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...

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.

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

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.

Are you on top?

The Ocean Inside

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

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!

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

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.

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

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

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."