Open Book

I don't need to know what goes on beyond closed doors; actually, usually, it's pretty obvious. The gamut of friends I know: the beautiful all the way to the ugly. Surface beauty I never considered a bench-mark. If I let my nails grow out a little more, and paint them, no one would recognize me. I've stockpiled a lot of food and water, just covering my ass; but despite several changes in identity I'm recognized crossing over into Canada. Fairly obvious how Tom became Thom. And all the rest of it, the sex change operation, holding on to what you thought was your essential self. I have to go sleep, but I was on to something. Few things bring me greater joy than knowing I'm correct about a very specific thing. The way a certain metal reacts under heat, how tadpoles mature, the number of steps you're willing to climb. That's a list, right? Three things. What you thought you were saying, what was perceived, what was actually said. Listen, I find myself in this position fairly often, you just have to suck it up and get on with the show. I can accomplish anything, not because I'm a genius, but I do know who to call. I have a short list of people that do particular things very well. Some of them owe me favors. I know where the bodies are buried. What it comes down to, I'm a good listener, but I couldn't listen, again, to the wedding reception song list, so I had a beer at lunch, avoided the festivities, kissed Sara on the cheek, and beat a path for home. Orchestrated fantasizes are not my cup of tea, but I seem to live in one. Not that my character had been revealed, a bit part in a movie, but that I was, somehow, exposed . Too many commas: Diana and I have talked about commas, the spoken voice. I'd argue that the spoken voice is guilty most of the time. What it seems to say. I hate to leave this hanging, but I have to go sleep. Maybe it isn't so much that I want to explain myself as it is that I want to be perfectly honest. It's late. I have a egg on toast. If you sleep in a down bag you can let the house get very cold. Awakened by the sound of a mousetrap. The ritual of starting a fire, pulling up my Selma rocker. A long essay about Giacometti, I love his work, the way it thins to nothingness. Knew a student of his and spent some time in his studio, mostly talking to his wife, because he didn't speak much. She wrote lovely sonnets and I published a cycle of them in a handsome letterpress edition. It's snowing harder and beginning to stick. Sticking to a theme I have a piece of toast with a pile of pulled pork barbeque, leftover from the reception, with an egg on top. If it continues snowing I could be trapped as I'm parked up top. I had to bring in liquids and I didn't feel like walking with a heavy pack. Now the sun is out and it's still snowing, beautiful prismatic things happening. Not snow, but that glimmery stuff, the name of which I've forgotten. It's short lived and very like a dream. There's no wind for the first time in days and I get the house warm enough that I can get by with just a threadbare sweatshirt that I found in the parking lot for the bank across the street from the museum. I find a surprising percentage of my clothes in parking lots. I wash them, of course, and keep some of them in 'sets' that I think of as disposable, for when I have to do a truly awful chore. Which said seems to fall to me, more often than it does to other people. I find myself standing in shit up to my thighs, for example, or crawling through a culvert looking for someone's watch. Or helping pull a body from the river, don't forget that one. For many years I thought I was being groomed to be the CEO of one of those companies that cleans up crime scenes, then I realized it was just that I didn't mind doing things other people paid other people to do. It was easier to do it myself than to find somebody else. Several times a year I get so dirty that it's better to throw the clothes away, and I feel good about myself if they're recycled, though all of my clothes reach that end, eventually. Back to a gentle snowfall, uniformly gray, I can't see the other side of the hollow, then another break in the clouds and a double rainbow. Luminous.