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Page 101

Not that it isn't sometimes a pleasure to be
a few feet in back of that oddly familiar
head or a few thousand miles from my body
among snowflakes over an empty ocean or
anyway, outside. Being out of the body
(a brief vacation or for good) can be
refreshing.

Imagine being locked up in a closet full of
warm, undulant, slimy, intestines. Imagine
an auditorium where you are surrounded
by Muzak sounds systems, all thundering, to the
heart's ostinato, "YOU ARE HERE! You
are MEAT! There is no other you, no other
place you can be! This is the taste of you.
You taste like saliva, and just give thanks
that the anus has no taste buds. You can't spit
yourself out. This is the sound of you,
the smell of you, and this pressure here
on the forehead is where you hit the swing,
and here is where you fell off your bike,
and that growing ache is where she left you,
and this one is where your dog died, and
that voice, the one that goes on and on,
circuiting, fixes everything for you
by saying, ‘I'm special, and no one
understands me,' and this one helps by saying,
‘I don't eat broccoli' and this one forgives you by saying,
‘Oh, I'm SUCH a klutz!' and here's one saying,
‘You have to lose, to win' and..." --

and, God, it's good to be here in all this silence,
requiring no justifications, no explanations,
amid snowflakes swirling over an endless sea.

Note: Why snowflakes over the sea? Because, one night, after a long drive, as I settled in to sleep (but still wide awake), I lay back and found myself out over the ocean (Atlantic, I think), watching snowflakes swirl into the waves (far from shore).

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