Today ten strangers and I were in a bus accident together. None of us noticed anything or the bus crashing until we were told about it. We glanced around blankly, shrugging at each other. I think the driver was distracted because a girl of eighteen or maybe nineteen in pink scanty summer gear, pink sunburn dulling her fake tan, had begun dramatically cooing at a mortified baby, asking it to smile for her, its mother smiling instead. She was going home or to work, most of us were. Meanwhile a frazzled man with an Einstein stache quickly wondered “Am I over?” while his grey sedan and his Friday morning plan crumpled into us. Every day until Monday will feel special: maybe there is God, maybe he was kept. One issue was that the driver wasn’t allowed to keep us on the bus but also wasn’t allowed to let us off, since the bus wasn’t stopped at an official bus stop. Pink Girl gave her phone number and offered to be a material witness, having seen nothing. Outside there was Wendy’s and a sex shop and an emergency clinic. My stop was next.
May 25
Route 77
"I want, if older,
still to know
why, human, men
and women are
so torn, so lost,
why hopes cannot
find better world
than this."
- Robert Creeley, from “Myself”
May 25
"When I had arrived I opened two windows and a door and the sun poured blocks and angles in, lighting up the floor’s skin of feathers and dust and old grain. The windows looked out onto fields and plants grew at the door, me killing them gradually with my urine. Wind came in wet and brought in birds who flew to the other end of the room to get their aim and fly out again. An old tap hung from the roof, the same colour as the walls, so once I knocked myself out on it.
For that week then I made a bed of the table there and lay out my fever, whatever it was. I began to block my mind of all thought. Just sensed the room and learnt what my body could do, what it could survive, what colours it liked best, what songs I sang best. There were animals who did not move out and accepted me as a larger breed. I ate the old grain with them, drank from a constant puddle about twenty yards away from the barn. I saw no human and heard no human voice, learned to squat the best way when shitting, used leaves for wiping, never ate flesh or touched another animal’s flesh, never entered his boundary. We were all aware and allowed each other. The fly who sat on my arm, after his inquiry, just went away, ate his disease and kept it in him. When I walked I avoided the cobwebs who had places to grow to, who had stories to finish. The flies caught in those acrobat nets were the only murder I saw."
- Michael Ondaatje, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid
May 21
May 14
Black Eyes, “Deformative”
"I can see that it will become a Bison. Then if they don’t redecorate the room it will change again. But I can’t see yet what it might become next. After all, I don’t suppose, on reflection, that anyone would even see the bison forming. Would they see, with some misgivings perhaps about the upkeep and hygiene of the room, anything but a patch where the ceiling paint has flaked? When I arrived, however, there was only a crack — suggesting, maybe, a twig of driftwood, a kris, an electric spark. And what a bestiary has since squeezed through that crack. Every morning there is paint dust on my blankets — though would the orderly notice that? I doubt it. The old government-issue paint has been falling, a powdered rain, constantly. And I have anticipated every form (all but the starfish: that, I admit, surprised me). They usually reach perfection about mid-afternoon and may live for two days, never more than three. Not that I would mind if they brought in the decorators — some of the terminal wards are in magnolia now, I know. But there would be something, whatever the colour — a brush mark, a bristle bedded in the paint, who knows?"
- Sean Virgo, from Haunt
May 13
The sun bulges out of the moon, the half-spent light bulbs sleep. The birds bark a pre-dawn song, I type a pre-dawn text. Spiders drop on me, thinking I make a good web.
May 10
Dawning
May 10
This was playing on my iPod when I was walking home last night and a rogue Catholic appeared on the sidewalk ahead of me with a conversion scheme, introducing himself and asking if I’ve ever had an experience where God touched my heart (pounding his chest to demonstrate where God or the heart is). I asked why he was out doing this so late and he said because God works in mysterious ways. When I put my headphones back in the song was at a flute solo part.
Tonight Facebook is recommending I like things like “Creative Writing” and “Barack Obama”. 140,365 people like Creative Writing. 3 friends like Barack Obama.
May 10
"Today all the patients agreed to say it was snowing. We all took our places by the windows and pressed our faces to the glass and exclaimed joyously over the snow and described it and dreamed about how wonderful it would be to play in it. Meanwhile the sun was shining away and the doctors got confused by our total agreement and couldn’t figure out if they should act like they were crazy and say it was snowing or act like they were crazy and say it wasn’t snowing. Meanwhile we saw the employees leap into the garden and run around acting like it was full of snow. I don’t know if our agitating had helped or if they were just taking advantage of the general confusion to get a break and go outside and fool around and enjoy the sun. But it really doesn’t matter. Because the press showed up and took pictures of the employees running around and throwing snowballs and sledding and making snowmen and rolling each other into the snow. In the newspapers it said that all the employees had gone crazy. They had flowers in their hair and dirt and grass all over them. It’s that kind of thing that puts pressure on the world. And one of them laughed right into the TV camera and shouted, I want so very much to love your pain. Even though things may be back to normal tomorrow, I don’t think any of them will forget that."
