Several feet above the ground.

Lift off.

I am overflowing with self expression. My floor is flooded with all the things I have ever tried to say. And the back of my spine, well, it's trying to remember where I shelved the books. Was it the 5th vertebrae, or in the attic under the lamp with the long orange extension chord?

In trying to examine the logistics of this sudden flood in relation to the history of critical drought I find myself creaking to such a stop. I think of kindling (all the pieces and ideas and thoughts that are pulling towards the same ecstatic fire) and I think of the breath that breaks them into flame (I have been drawing in breath for ever so long). It's almost as if I have stopped.

Is it like the series of photographs above? I wanted to keep going up and up and up. But there was a limit to my gravity-less-ness. I need something to hang on to. To convince you.

And maybe that's when the fire will start. The books will never be found, but they'll start to own their own space like a magnet or dark matter. An invisible weight. It cannot be explained but suddenly ---Ah!

"J"

WE'RE ALL MY BROTHER.

We all put on Davids sweaters and Jackets that were lying in the crates he was leaving behind. David was wearing a lace Santa cap with pink fur around the edge and on the top. Sarah and I made it for him one Christmas. I was surprised he'd kept it until this point. Now it had filtered out of the dregs and he put it on his head.

David took a picture of us standing in his clothes, he cropped the heads like a thumb blocking them. We tried to stand like he stands, then we sat like ourselves in the rubble of his leaving. A type writer without a ribbon, ink spots on the floor, a spool of film marked "return to Lorraine Rene Cook," some white shoes without laces, sheets, a pile of clothes.

David asked if we'd follow him around the house, in a line, while he pushed smoke into every corner with a smudge stick. We agreed and followed him from corner to corner. He danced walked, I laughed. He was still wearing the lace hat.

We followed David outside of the house to porch by my window. David turned and smudged each of us with the smoke. He smeared cedar on each forehead. "Cedar to protect against evil" he murmured. He put the burning smudge into a ceramic pot waiting on the brick then threw the whole thing at a rock post supporting the roof. It shattered and the pieces fell.

We helped him carry his bags out to the car. He hugged us each goodbye and left to spend the night in the airport.

Communion May, Communión Mayo

Communion in May. Oh ho lag a day! This time more instruments than players, next time more centaurs and less hooligans, and the time after we can expect more rain than fire, I tell you. I'd like to quote a friend and say "the rocks are doing something, so bode well for the sticks," but that's not exactly what he said as he threw the hat onto the rocket launcher. No need to worry, this is all entirely true, except for the parts I'm making up.


Speaking of centaurs.




And with beliefs green. So spoke the queen. Ah, ye of little faith, and much smaller fingers. The tiniest fingers (to come!).

Todayism

Everything is Happening. And it's funny. The boy barked our warning and we stopped still, by the skate park. Holding hands, waiting for another signal. A dog barked at the boy, the boy barked, we started walking again, holding hands, as if we had been walking all the while.

I started a fire in the fireplace. I burned a lot of advertisements (in a variety of neon colored flames) before the wood caught fire. The wood caught fire! I thought about digging a fire pit with a stick in a hard flat clearing while it was raining. I thought about blowing on those precious bits of kindling and how the fire pit was not deep enough to stop the wind.



Everything is funny. My leg spasms when things are so funny that they are sad. Or so sad that they are funny. Or so sad/funny that they are beautiful. Everything is beautiful and easy.

The fire now, in it's very burned down state, reminds me of Christmas. That, and the colored lights. Both, together. I feel like it is Christmas eve. I am excited because I like laying next to the tree and smelling it. I also like to practice balancing while watching the fire. I have not practiced balancing since Christmas when I was eight. I used to balance for long periods of time in the living room, standing on small platforms with wheels (not limited to skate boards). I would pursue balance.

Today I am pursing health. I am stalking it. I am taking it to sleep with me, and drinking little bits of it, and putting my head over a hot bowl of it and breathing it in. I am taking brisk bike rides with it, I am putting it in the dishwater and rubbing it into my skin. I am considering constructing a small platform and labeling it "health." After I make it I will spend hours balancing on it in front of the fire.

There are so many things I could spend hours doing!




Why does Jesus holds up two fingers in the paintings? Because he is pushing a little blessing at you, bopping it along. His fingers are the paddle, the blessing is the Foosball.

I laughed so much when the blessing bopped Stef. She got three Yahtzee's in a row and couldn't stop shaking with joy. My stomach ached in horrible spasms of empathy. I was afraid I would stop breathing, or that Stef would keep on shaking, and then so would I. We would shake and shake and the fire would forget it was a fire. I would forget to balance, the blessings would wander off course, two dogs would be barking and we wouldn't know which one was meant to stop us or make us go.