Coincidence

An owl woke me. The windows were open, I was sleeping with night music, bugs and frogs, and that particular sound a light breeze makes in late summer leaves. White noise, really, the natural version. More than restful, almost narcotic, dreaming about some early love, Marcy, that mole in the hollow of her shoulder blade. Sleeping away, not a care in the world, when this owl sets up, outside my window, and I'm wrenched away from my sweet dreams. Actually the sound of the owl isn't unpleasant, just different, what I'm hearing at any given moment. Cage put me onto this. Merely listen. He'd have loved this concert. Background noise that's probably crickets, some tree-frogs, a breeze that rustles drying leaves. I think about Holly, some impossible contortion with one of the cirque girls, hey, I'm also human. And finally come to rest as a pile of dirty laundry tossed into a corner. Not what I would make of myself, given open parameters, but where I find myself. Fucking owl. I go ahead and get up, make a cup of coffee; shave and a sponge bath. Read for an hour, then off to the museum, first day for packing up the ODC show, it'll take several. Artist packed shows are a royal pain in the ass. D is gone to Columbus, to pick up more of the Doll Show, but TR has come in to help. He's excited to be handling art, thinks the white gloves are cool. First we have to bring up the fifty or sixty boxes from the basement, set up a couple of blanket covered tables. He's a fast study. He's reading "The Cistern" right now, slowly, as it needs to be read, and says he's never read anything like it, questions me about how I did it. I told him I really didn't know, that I just stepped things up a level and struggled to maintain it. That book was hard work, intense, but I needed that then. Writing it might have saved my life. We talk about music composition. The day moves well, we get a lot done, maybe a third of the show, but by 4:30 I'm weary and my feet hurt. When I close up, I consider going over to the pub for a pint, but I just want to get home. Pick up a footer and jalapeno poppers, so I won't have to cook, I was going to have a salad with a can of tuna dumped on top, but picking up fast food, assures that I will eat something, absolutely, because the smell will drive me crazy by the time I get home. I don't even get home, eat a couple of the poppers when I enter that section of Mackletree, in the state forest, which is now a cool, canopied tunnel. It shouldn't surprise me that I have a facility with language, I've been writing for a long time; like playing the guitar, you get better, shouldn't be all that surprising. But the real point comes, often reading over last night's post, to see if there was a direction I wanted to go, a specific thing I needed to mention, something to remember; and I'll find a great sentence, what I thought could be, and within a couple of hours I have several emails from close readers, out there, pointing to the fact that the sentence in question was very good. So across a spectrum of samples, we all find this sentence special, pregnant, something. Interesting. You see, right? how it herds meaning into a pen. Venn Diagrams. Misty picked up lunches at the pub today, and she walked the long way around, so she'd pass behind me on her way, I put out my hand, to stop her, asked if she'd like to go for a drink, some afternoon after work. She thought I'd never ask. I'm pretty confused by this but I see where it's leading. But why me, I can't help thinking, before I realize I am a writer, a poet, and all the ladies want to fuck a poet, it's like a notch on your garter-belt, whatever. I've only ever had failed relationships and making me a notch is as good as anything. Fine. A fraying signifier in a worn-out belt. Like that, for instance, how the hell can I say that?