on jaguar sharks and the importance of catching meteors

i am obsessed with time. clocks. memory.

after the new year, i always end up looking back and getting caught in moments, mostly those which i've written down. except the actual words on the page, or wherever i've scrawled them, are not always the ones which i remember when i reread them. i see sapphire hummingbirds, and i mean the stream, and trying to settle. i think of basil, and a tiny bleach-blonde italian man who speaks spanish with an accent and has eyes the size of maracuya flashes inside my head.

my favorites are the times when all i wanted was to pause everything, to stop the progressive movement of time, and to be in wherever i was, eternal.

drinking hierba luisa from those little plastic cups on the front steps of the reserve every morning, waiting for bigote to finish breakfast; especially during rainstorms. watching the bats begin to swoop through the gulley from six fifteen ( just as the sun begins to go down thirty miles south of pedernales) until i can no longer see anything but quick flashes of black [and all the time thinking that maybe they are just tricks of light, things my eyes are creating, visual little white lies]. jaguar shark skies on the boat, sleeping restless first on the chairs and then on the deck, and then curled, cold and growing ill, against the bow itself. standing in alessandro's bathroom and staring at his grapefruit as they grow in the open window. the flight invasion over our heads near prince phillip's steps. mompiche; every moment. the lovely bones; every word[because of the story or because of where i was at, in my heart? maybe it was both]. singing on the beach by the bonfire, with harmonica and guitar and words about lonely sailors coming home from the sea.

sitting on top of the sand dunes, our dunes. talking about the brothers, and how their eyes are the same. not needing to say much. nothing and everything mattering in moments, and deciding spontaneously to come home. long distance telephone calls from airports, out of nowhere and that meaning all of it. being where i ought to be. singing on softball fields to baby girls in the twilight. drinking coffee at fair trade with the smart mouth, and the philosopher, and sola [plus peppermint ice cream]. doing yoga at james madison, and stretch stretch stretching up higher, toward the seagulls. pushing my ribs out toward mendota. morning breakfast dates with my girls. powwows in king sized beds. allowing the serenade to make me smile. darjeeling, and the emanation afterward. being terrified of say anything. inappropriate songs and unproductive evenings around the dinner table. gorgonzola and butternut squash and candied walnuts and raspberry port and banana pancakes and fair trade coffee and frozen snickers and pinkus bars and spanish rice and macaroni and newcastle.

they're running together there at the end. amassing weight, like a giant ball of letters, falling down a hill the size of san fransisco. the quickfire synapse collection which happens because i am tangential. and twitchy. i jump all around. but i'd rather be like that...i'd rather be like that, than straightforward and unscary and constantly content with everything. REVEL, i say. i kept it for a year, and i think i can do it again.


didn't i | didn't i tell you